Senior Program Officer, Digital Payments Usage - Seattle, United States - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Description

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we're committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

From the foundation's inception, the Global Growth & Opportunity division (GGO) has focused on addressing the problems that most seriously imperil the health and well-being of the world's poorest people. GGO advances this mission by helping to improve the financial, sanitation, agricultural and education systems so that the poor – especially the poorest women and girls – to more fully participate in their economy and society. We seek solutions that are sustainable, transformative, data-driven, and inclusive.

Inclusive Financial Systems (IFS) - We work to broaden the reach of low-cost digital financial services for the poor by supporting what we and our partners believe are the most catalytic approaches to financial inclusion. These include promoting the development of digital payment systems that can help spread use of digital financial services quickly, advancing gender equality to ensure that women share in the benefits of financial inclusion, and supporting the development of national and regional strategies that accelerate progress for the poor and can serve as models.

Your Role

The IFS team has worked extensively to digitize government-to-person (G2P) payments as well as wage payments for low-income employees (e.g., garment workers) around the world. We are continuing to build on that work by expanding the use cases of digital payments among low-income people, including merchant payments and payments in the agriculture sector.

We are seeking a Senior Program Officer, Digital Payments Usage, to drive uptake of digital payments – both inflows and outflows – among unbanked and under-banked customers in low-income countries. Your role will be to lead our work on digitizing merchant payments and to support the other payment use cases. In this role, you will work across the foundation and the industry to develop and manage a portfolio of investments that align to our new strategy, pushing the bounds of our thinking on how to solve seemingly intractable problems that hinder the adoption of digital payments among our target population. In addition, you will serve as an internal and external expert on scaling digital payments among low-income users, especially merchant payments, continuing to build the foundation's role as a leader with vision in the industry.

This role reports to the Deputy Director, Usage, Gender, and Distribution. The role does not have people management responsibilities, but does manage relationships across a matrix of internal and external collaborators.

This role is a full-term position with comprehensive benefits, ideally based in either our Seattle, WA, Washington, DC, or London, UK offices.

What You'll Do

• Continue to iterate and improve upon the existing payments strategy in a way that improves our potential for impact; balances learning, innovation, and scaling; and integrates a gender lens.
• Develop and manage a portfolio of investments that align to the strategy and that result in measurable financial inclusion impact, especially for women.
• Exercise thought leadership within the IFS team and actively partner with colleagues leading work on policy and regulation, consumer protection, digital infrastructure, and focus country programs.
• Collaborate beyond IFS with other foundation program strategy teams – especially Gender Equality, Digital Public Infrastructure, and Agricultural Development – to co-design investments aligned to each team's strategies.
• Establish and manage an ambitious but achievable road map for your portfolio.
• Set and meet or exceed clear, measurable critical metrics for the portfolio.
• Manage the portfolio of investments for on-time completion of targets and deliverables.
• Manage the annual budgets to avoid over/underspending while ensuring the highest impact return on investment.
• Identify key portfolio risks, and develop, communicate, and implement mitigation strategies.
• Lead a process of systematic learning from successes and failures in the portfolio.
• Continually hone your expertise in digital payments, especially merchant payments, by monitoring and sharing out emerging evidence, innovation, and trends.
• Serve as a spokesperson and represent IFS's interests as they relate to payments to achieve financial inclusion both internally with other teams and externally with partners, peers, and other collaborators.
• Work with foundation leadership as requested to address cross-cutting issues and improve functions and performance.
• Lead the preparation of materials for the annual planning process, strategy reviews, learning sessions, briefings, and submissions to the GGO President, CEO, and Co-Chairs, and other deliverables as required.
• Ability to travel 30% domestically and internationally.

Your Experience

• Proven expertise in the design and/or delivery of innovative digital payment solutions, ideally gained as an operator, investor, or consultant. A minimum of 12 years of experience is preferred.
• Practical experience working with the foundation's target populations to achieve impact in the form of increased incomes and resilience; extensive operational experience gained in the field with our target populations, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa or South/Southeast Asia, is strongly preferred.
• Experience managing ambitious targets, preferably with P&L responsibility.
• Ability to develop a coherent strategy and implement it; results-oriented with an ability to prioritize, make trade-off decisions, focus, and get things done within a complex organizational structure.
• Demonstrated capacity to use data and evidence as a tool for problem solving.
• Experience building partnerships with cross-sectoral, cross-functional teams to tackle complex and multi-faceted problems, including with the private sector, government agencies, and civil society.
• Exceptional communication skills – ability to translate complex ideas into a coherent message for diverse audiences. In addition to general communication skills, the ability to communicate in a local language in any of our focus countries is highly valued.
• A highly cultivated sense of resilience. You can accept and recover from setbacks quickly, adapt well to change, and drive forward in the face of adversity with a positive attitude and sense of humor.
• An advanced degree in Finance, Economics, Business, or related field is preferred.
• Demonstrated commitment to the foundation's core values and mission. *Applicants for this role will only be considered if they are able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

The US salary range for this role is $166,300 to $249,500 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences where our offices are located, in Seattle, WA & Washington D.C. The range for this role in these locations is $181,200 to $271,800 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission and new hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary range between the minimum and the midpoint salary range. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate's job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

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Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

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Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.