Portfolio Manager

About Imagine Worldwide

All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don’t have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide’s mission is to empower millions of children across Sub-Saharan Africa with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to reach their full potential. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using the onebillion application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Nine Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) across multiple countries and settings have shown dramatic learning gains, increased school attendance, and gender parity, all for less than $7 per child per year.

Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are a California-based (United States) nonprofit organization operating across seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Learn more on our website.

About the Role

The Portfolio Manager will play a supporting role in carrying out Imagine’s mission, to design, test and scale tablet-based learning solutions that enable children to become literate and numerate. The position offers an international, flexible, learning environment to enhance individual career development and growth. The Portfolio Manager will join a highly committed and collaborative team that is working together to empower every child everywhere to achieve their full potential. They will work closely with the Head of Portfolio (COO equivalent) of Imagine, the Chief of Staff and the Executive Associates in our scale countries, to support Imagine’s growth in our scale countries. 

Key Responsibilities

The Portfolio Manager will report to the Head of Portfolio, who carries overall responsibility for the smooth progression and management of our scale countries (portfolios) on their paths to nationwide adoption and institutionalization of our program into core education programming. The candidate will focus not only on providing administrative and operational support, but also on driving key organizational initiatives. This role involves conducting research for problem or root-cause analysis, preparing impactful presentations, and managing strategic projects to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of Imagine Worldwide's mission delivery. The ideal candidate must be a world-class operator with strong relationship-building skills. The Portfolio Manager’s responsibilities will include - but will not be limited to - the  following: 

Head of Portfolio Support

• Work directly with the Head of Portfolio to support key aspects of their work.
• Prepare impactful presentations for meetings, including gathering documents, drafting documents or presentations and attending to the logistics of meetings, virtual and in-person.
• Consolidate notes from meetings and discussions, share action steps and follow up to resolve issues. 
• Draft, review and send communications on behalf of executives. Coordinate work with other staff as needed and play a key role in the coordination of organizational efforts both within and outside Imagine Worldwide.
• Facilitate alignment of team activities and tasks within Imagine’s theory of change to maximize results. 

Portfolio Reporting

• Assist the Head of Portfolio in monitoring program performance across countries by reviewing data, preparing reports, and identifying gaps and areas requiring improvement and/or escalation
• Prepare concise monthly portfolio reports summarizing key metrics and updates from country teams.
• Keep the Head of Portfolio advised of time-sensitive and priority issues, ensuring appropriate follow-up.
• Support executives to manage information flow across the organization in a timely and accurate manner to maximize team productivity.

Strategic Project Management and Business Analysis

• Assist the Head of Portfolio to identify issues or matters that require prioritization, escalation or other remediation and monitor progress to resolution
• Proactively identify the need and scope for strategic projects to tackle issues that entail a complex set of activities to resolve over a longer period of time
• Collaborate with the Head of Portfolio to conduct research for problem or root-cause analysis and drive key strategic projects to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of Imagine Worldwide's mission delivery
• Conduct business analysis activities to define or map business processes, determine touch points and key stakeholders, identify system or process gaps and ultimately produce business process documentation for sharing with broader teams

Knowledge Management

• Lead the management and maintenance of the Imagine ‘Playbook'. The Playbook details our in-country implementation model, which spans 5 to 8 years from early-stage pilots to full-scale deployments throughout the country, with the ultimate goal of fully transitioning the program to government ownership.
• The Portfolio Manager must work in collaboration with Functional Leads to maintain and update content and build a culture and the mechanisms for continuous co-creation.
• Identify or source raw/unstructured information across the organization and document, compile activities, package toolkits and templates to ensure the Playbook remains relevant and up to date.
• Identify, standardise and automate frequently used artefacts such as reporting templates.
• Manage no-code and low-code platforms (currently Airtable, Softr, Notion) and tools used for the playbook and become the playbook owner.

Collaboration & Productivity Tools

• Train new joiners and individual staff members on the use of our internal collaboration and productivity tools (currently Google Suite, Slack, Asana).
• Develop strategies to drive utilization and adoption of online collaboration and productivity tools for project management and stakeholder management, to enable as much asynchronous work as possible and maximise team productivity.
• Become a super-user of internal tools and coach team members.
• Collaborate with the Director of ICT Services to enable or update access rights and permissions for individual team members, as required.

Country Board Support

• Collaborate with in-country Executive Associates to schedule country-level board meetings well in advance; coordinate with executive directors and attend to the logistics of meetings. In the absence of Executive Associates, take full accountability for board meetings.
• Assist with the preparation and review of board packs for board meetings, including gathering documents, drafting documents or presentations and/or formatting documents to deliver high professional output.
• Assist with minute-taking during board meetings, share action steps and follow up to resolve issues.

Requirements

The successful candidate will possess the following competencies, experiences, and qualities: 

• Bachelor’s Degree.
• A minimum of 8 years’ experience in operations management, management consulting, project management, monitoring and evaluation, or a similar field.
• Strong digital literacy skills using a variety of no-code, artificial intelligence tools, other productivity and collaboration tools.
• Additional work experience is welcome. 

Specific skills (required)

Exceptional project management skills and proven experience that includes: 

• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.
• Strong communication skills and ability to write clear and concise reports and synthesise information into compelling presentations.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills.
• Ability to work effectively in multicultural environments and teams.
• Familiarity with productivity and collaboration tools for task and project management.
• Exceptional with the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT, GoPilot, Google AI etc.
• Strong aptitude for data analysis and data-driven decision-making
• Strong organizational skills and superior attention to detail.
• Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Excellent working knowledge of G Suite, MS Office, Slack etc.
• Ability to prioritize and display a high level of adaptability/flexibility

Compensation & Benefits

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.

Location

The Portfolio Manager must be based on the African continent, ideally close to the Central African Timezone. The Portfolio Manager will frequently collaborate and coordinate with teams in Malawi, Tanzania and Sierra Leone, as well as the Imagine Global team.

Applications close January 7th 2025.

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Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.