Chief of Staff to the CEO

Chief of Staff to the CEO

Location: Delhi, Manila, Nairobi, Lusaka, Rabat, or Senegal

IDinsight’s Global Executive Team leads IDinsight’s strategic, operational, and growth objectives to maximise its social impact across all its functional and regional teams. Its function involves setting, tracking, and meeting critical results on:

• Social impact of our project portfolio
• Contributions to improvements in the global development sector
• Strength of the organization – strategic, team health, operational, financial, and legal

Currently, we are seeking a Chief of Staff to support the CEO as part of this team.

About IDinsight

We transform how the world fights poverty. Our mission is to improve lives with data and evidence.

IDinsight is a global nonprofit that equips leaders with the data, evidence and technology to improve lives at scale. We partner with governments, NGOs, multilaterals, and funders to support decisions at every stage of their impact journey – from bold pilots to nationwide scale-ups. Our teams bring rigorous evidence and practical insights so leaders can make informed decisions that truly change lives. With our partners, we are pioneering the next frontier of social impact, where data and technology accelerate progress for millions. We help leaders overcome the three main barriers to impact:

1. Figuring out what works
2. Learning and improving
3. Reaching and operating at scale

We work in multiple countries across Asia and Africa. Our work spans a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, education, health, governance, sanitation, financial inclusion, and other areas.

We have expertise in a variety of rigorous approaches and methodologies, which we tailor to each client depending on their needs and constraints. To achieve a positive social impact, we:

• Support our partners with the full ‘data and evidence’ value chain – from primary data collection to data systems, monitoring evaluation and learning tools, and data science
• Inform funding decisions – toward high-impact initiatives and away from less effective programs or approaches
• Create cutting-edge AI-for-good products that make the delivery of social interventions and learning tools more cost-effective and scalable

Our diverse, growing team of roughly 250 outstanding colleagues operate in nearly two dozen countries around the world. Learn more about our mission, values, and principles at www.IDinsight.org.

About the role

Reporting directly to the CEO, the Chief of Staff (CoS) serves as a strategic partner, integrator, and operational anchor across IDinsight’s global leadership. The CoS plays a critical role in ensuring that the CEO’s time, priorities, and strategic focus are deployed toward the organization’s highest-impact goals, while also supporting cross-organizational alignment and execution.

This role combines high-level strategy, systems thinking, and hands-on execution. The CoS works closely with the CEO, Executive Team, Board of Directors, and senior leaders across regions and functions to drive organizational effectiveness, strengthen internal linkages, and foster a culture of clarity, accountability, and collaboration.

The CoS is a Manager to Associate Director-level role. The CEO has an Executive Assistant who manages scheduling and administrative logistics; the CoS role is not primarily administrative but rather focuses on strategic and operational support, including helping to organize executive time and priorities at a strategic level. The CoS may directly supervise fractional interns and associates who support the CEO's office and cross-cutting organizational initiatives.

Specific responsibilities would include:

• Strategy
  • Own and drive the organization's goal-setting and performance tracking framework (currently an “Objectives and Key Results” system), ensuring annual goals are established, monitored, and reported to the Board
  • Develop inputs from quantitative analyses and consultations to monitor and refine the implementation of IDinsight’s multi-year strategy for impact growth.
  • Translate strategic priorities into clear, actionable plans, and coordinate cross-functional and regional execution against them
  • Facilitate standing meetings of senior leaders around current challenges and opportunities at the organizational level
  • Maintain awareness of key developments in the evidence, evaluation, and AI landscape and surface opportunities or risks relevant to IDinsight's strategy and positioning
• Special projects
  • Elevate IDinsight’s operating standards by identifying, implementing, and tracking system and process improvements in partnership with functional and client-facing teams
  • Lead or participate in cross-team working groups and internal projects to achieve strategic objectives
  • Design and manage strategic talent and leadership development initiatives (e.g., rotational programs, onboarding frameworks) that build organizational capacity and support the professional growth of emerging leaders
• Internal communications and Executive Voice
  • Draft and manage CEO communications across internal channels (e.g., Slack, email, all-hands meetings), board materials, and stakeholder updates, serving as a trusted voice proxy for the CEO when needed
  • Shape the messaging and framing of organizational priorities, ensuring that strategic decisions are communicated with clarity and consistency across the organization
• Relationship building and coordination
  • Manage the Executive team’s preparation and involvement with organization-wide processes, internal team meetings, and other engagements that drive alignment, shared knowledge, and learning
  • Prepare and follow up on meetings by generating data-driven insights, developing presentations, drafting written deliverables, capturing and sharing meeting notes, maintaining task lists, and tracking critical next steps to completion
  • Develop talking points, presentations, and written materials for the CEO's internal and external engagements, synthesizing complex information into clear, compelling narratives
  • Shape the messaging and framing of organizational priorities, ensuring that strategic decisions are communicated with clarity and consistency across the organization
  • When needed, participate directly in meetings and represent the CEO’s point of view in internal and external settings
• Executive and Board Management
  • Manage the CEO’s time, priorities, and information flow to ensure focus on the organization’s most strategic work
  • Support the Executive team in engagement with the Board of Directors, Board of Advisors, clients, funders, and other stakeholders
  • Lead Board engagement, including planning and executing board meetings, overseeing governance and compliance processes, and maintaining board knowledge management systems
  • Manage ongoing relationships with individual board members between meetings, ensuring timely follow-up on action items, facilitating information requests, and keeping governance communications on track
• Organizational Coordination and Change Management
  • Strengthen linkages between the Executive Team and regional and functional teams to ensure clear communication, information cascade, and organizational alignment.
  • Support and sometimes lead organizational change management initiatives that enhance coordination, performance, and culture.
  • Partner with senior leaders to steward key organizational initiatives, ensuring momentum, clarity, and accountability
• Thought Partnership and Representation
  • Serve as a trusted advisor and thought partner to the CEO and other members of the Executive Team
  • Pressure-test strategic decisions by providing independent analysis, surfacing risks and trade-offs, and offering candid counsel on cross-cutting organizational priorities
  • Synthesize information from across the organization to help the CEO and Executive Team maintain a clear, current picture of organizational health, emerging risks, and strategic opportunities
• Event Planning and Leadership Engagement
  • Lead the end-to-end planning and execution of high-impact internal events – including executive retreats, leadership summits, CEO roadshows, in-person board meetings, and organization-wide convenings – from scoping and programming design through vendor procurement, stakeholder coordination, and on-site delivery
• Technology and Operational Efficiency
  • Leverage technology and AI tools to improve executive workflows, streamline information management, and increase the efficiency of organizational coordination and reporting.
  • Identify and implement process improvements that reduce manual overhead for the CEO and Executive Team, enabling greater focus on high-impact work.

Why being CoS is a great opportunity!

The CoS will directly support IDinsight’s CEO and inform how a growing and influential organization in the social sector thinks, operates, and engages at the global and regional levels. The CoS will build core skills and knowledge related to strategic thinking, org building, portfolio management, communications, and relationship management. These skills are applicable across many contexts and roles and set up any successful CoS for greater leadership opportunities in the future. The role will be particularly appealing for those who may wish to go on to lead social enterprises in the future.

IDinsight occupies a distinctive position at the nexus of rigorous evaluation, applied evidence, and AI - partnering with some of the most impactful evidence-driven organizations in the world. Our philanthropic partners include the Hewlett Foundation, IKEA Foundation, the Hilton Foundation, Gates Foundation, GiveWell, Google.org, Anthropic, the Prevail Fund, and Cartier Philanthropy. On the implementation side, we work alongside organizations such as Educate Girls, Village Enterprise, GiveDirectly, and Evidence Action, among many others. The CoS will have exposure to these relationships and the strategic conversations that shape how evidence and data are used to drive development impact at scale.

IDinsight has a strong track record of developing its people. Alumni of the CoS and similar leadership roles have grown precipitously within IDinsight or moved into high-impact positions across the sector, with explicit championing and mentorship from the CEO. This is a role where your professional growth is not incidental - it is a deliberate outcome of the partnership between you and the CEO.

The CoS will routinely be part of high-stakes internal and external conversations, which will hone skills related to quickly assessing a particular environment and audience and dynamically messaging ideas to achieve the intended outcomes. The CoS will also be pushed to develop new processes and systems and implement special projects— opportunities that will push their growth in new contexts.

Qualifications

• Strong commitment to advancing IDinsight’s mission and vision for the sector
• Strong understanding of development policy and social sector in LMICs required, with approximately 6 to 12 years of professional experience, including meaningful time working in or with LMIC contexts
• Standout project management skills, with an ability to easily switch between high-level considerations and nuts and bolts of implementation
  • Experience managing concurrent workstreams across multiple time zones, with the ability to maintain quality and momentum in a globally distributed organization.
• Experience designing and managing programs involving multiple stakeholders and junior team members, including mentoring, onboarding, and performance support. People management experience preferred
• Expertly develop and execute tactical assignments, including producing high-quality deliverables independently
• Excellent judgement and problem-solving abilities, with an ability to think through complex questions conscientiously and judiciously
• Demonstrated track record as a self-starter and leader, including comfort with ambiguity and dynamic environments and workstreams
• Strong communicator in multiple fora (written communications, public speaking, teamwork, and upward management)
• Strong written communication skills, including comfort ghostwriting for senior executives and adapting tone and voice across different audiences and channels
• Comfort with AI and technology tools for workflow automation, information management, and executive support
• Experience managing vendor relationships, procurement processes, or consultant engagements
• Solutions-oriented, with an ability to translate strategic ideas to action plans working across multiple work-streams in parallel
• Strong desire for professional growth and development, with a track record of openness to give and receive feedback;
• High level of independence and sharp attention to detail
• Strong ability to maintain integrity and confidentiality in complex situations; to handle sensitive information, data, and issues with mature and discreet professionalism
• Ability to serve as a culture carrier for IDinsight - someone who embodies and reinforces the organization's values, principles, norms, and ways of working across teams and contexts
• Intellectually curious, with a genuine interest in how evidence, data, and AI can improve decision-making for social impact
  
  

Professional development

Skill and career development are core to IDinsight's values and long-term impact strategy and have been noted highlights of teammates’ experiences. IDinsighters receive significant mentorship from IDinsight leadership, support from talented peers, and considerable autonomy when ready. They maintain professional development plans and are provided "stretch" opportunities designed to strengthen various skills. Real-time feedback is embedded in our culture, and a formal structure enables maximum professional growth. Additionally, teammates have access to an annual professional development stipend that they are encouraged to explore their career interests and develop their skills.

Nuts & bolts

Location

This position can be based out of any IDinsight office: Delhi, Manila, Nairobi, Lusaka, Rabat, or Dakar.

IMPORTANT: This role is not available for candidates based in the United States. Applicants must be based in, or willing to relocate to, one of IDinsight's regional offices listed above.

We strongly encourage applications from candidates with existing ties to the regions where we operate. Preference will be given to those with pre-existing work authorization; however, IDinsight will pursue work permits for exceptional candidates where possible.

Work Hours

Desired work hours: at least 3-4 hours’ overlap with US EST; this would require heavier evening work hours for India or SEA candidates, with lots of flexibility.

Level

Manager to Associate Director. This role is designed for professionals with approximately 6 to 12 years of experience. We are unlikely to consider candidates significantly more junior or more senior than this range.

Start date

The ideal start date of this position is August 15, 2026.

Work authorization

IDinsight can sponsor employment visas for all nationalities in these locations; however, we will prioritise candidates who do not require IDinsight to sponsor work authorization in the aforementioned countries. All candidates not currently located in our country offices listed above will be expected to relocate to their office locations at the onset of their employment.

Compensation

Compensation and benefits are commensurate with the qualifications and experiences IDinsight is hiring for and competitive within the global development sector. We are especially proud of the people-focused benefits we offer, including comprehensive international health insurance, including mental health coverage; paid vacation, sick, and parental leave; relocation benefits; a travel stipend; technology and work from home stipends; a professional development budget; and more.

Please note, as a non-profit, we are unable to provide compensation similar to leading private sector organizations.

How to apply

Please click the "Apply for this job online" button at the top right. Applications are due on July 31, 2026 at 11:59 (PST). The application asks various questions for us to get to know you and requires a CV. Please note that applications will be processed on a rolling basis.

Please ensure that your CV includes relevant professional and personal experience and details on academic qualifications. CVs can range from one to two pages. Please note that headshot photographs, parental information, birth dates, marital status, and other personal information not relevant to the application do not need to be included in your CV.

More information, including details on IDinsight’s hiring process
and frequently asked questions, can be found online at IDinsight Careers. Any queries should be directed to careers@IDinsight.org.

IDinsight’s commitment to reducing power asymmetries

IDinsight is committed to reducing power asymmetries in the social sector. Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion reflects our understanding of the need for the sector to abandon unhealthy practices of the past. We wish to be part of a new generation of international NGOs who are honest about this history and transparent about our role in the present. Our commitment is also aligned with the impact of our work.

We seek a workforce that is inclusive of a variety of perspectives that will help us refine and improve our methods and relationships and strengthen the services we provide our clients and their communities or constituencies. The following commitments represent our vision for the IDinsight team:

1. IDinsight will have greater representation from the populations with whom we work and clients we serve.
2. IDinsight will have greater representation from the countries in which we work.
3. Across all countries in which we recruit, we will seek greater representation from historically excluded communities.
4. IDinsight will foster an inclusive work culture that empowers a diverse team to do their best work.

IDinsight is an equal opportunity employer and strives to create a diverse and supportive workplace.