Associate Vice President, Africa

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE:

For more than 43 million people, blindness is a daily reality; another 295 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment. 90% of these people live in low- and middle-income communities where access to eye care is limited and the challenges for those who can’t see are severe. But there is hope: 80% of this burden is treatable or preventable. For example, 17 million blind people could be cured with a 10-minute cataract surgery. Millions more suffer from corneal blindness, which is often preventable or treatable. At HCP Cureblindness, we believe avoidable blindness can – and must – be overcome. For more than 25 years, we have worked alongside a capable network of collaborators to help people around the world retain and regain their sight by developing high-quality, cost-effective eye care systems in underserved areas of the world. With the help of partners in more than 25 countries, HCP has provided more than 1.4 million sight-restoring surgeries and screened more than 14.5 million people to provide care and basic treatments. We’ve trained more than 19,500 eye health professionals and have established 5 eye hospitals. There is more work left to do, but we can overcome the mountain of global blindness, together.

HCP Cureblindness is expanding its team to meet new challenges, scale its work, and broaden its reach. We are seeking individuals who are passionate about changing lives and want to be a part of a team that works together to reach new heights. We want leaders who can aim high, make things happen, and are invested in building a positive team dynamic to bring the work to life.

VISION: A world in which no one is needlessly blind.

MISSION: We enable countries to end avoidable blindness by developing high quality, cost-effective eye care systems in underserved areas of the world so everyone everywhere can regain or retain their sight.

SCOPE OF WORK:

The Associate Vice President, Africa, is responsible for leading all HCP operations in Africa, including managing country offices in Ethiopia and Ghana and a growing portfolio of programs across South Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Somaliland and Rwanda. The AVP, Africa is responsible for implementing HCP’s global strategy in the region, through the development of sustainable regional capability and capacity to eliminate needless blindness. As a member of the global program leadership team, the AVP is critical in driving scale and sustainability for HCP’s forward-looking strategy.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

• Build and maintain highly collaborative working relationships with counterparts in other HCP Cureblindness offices, including regional offices, national offices and headquarters.
• Foster a positive and productive organizational culture in alignment with HCP Cureblindness global culture and values.
• Achieve and exceed organization goals for training, infrastructure, patient care and prevention.
• Instill operational and business management rigor in the organization, in the areas of scorecard, analysis, reporting, financial accountability, partner relationship management, and day to day operations.

Regional/Global Leadership

• Develop and lead regional strategy for HCP Cureblindness, identifying pathways to best contribute to advancing our mission of elimination of needless blindness through capacity building, infrastructure, patient care and prevention.
• Manage country leadership and operations.
• Develop comprehensive understanding of regional eye care climate, barriers and opportunities.
• Drive strategic relationship development to serve our long-term needs with government officials, key opinion leaders, hospitals, NGOs and the public.
• Collaborate closely with regional and technical leads to set goals, priorities and performance metrics.

Program & Partner Strategy

• Evaluate partnership opportunities to expand geography, scope and scale of HCP’s work in the region.
• Serve as a member of the global programmatic leadership team, shaping global strategy in collaboration with other regional and programmatic team members.
• Collaboration with the program’s team leads to enable programmatic consistency and shared learnings across countries.
• Cultivate strong donor relationships in the region and partner with Development and Marketing to develop funding proposals and donor reports.
• Partner with global functional leads on HR, Finance, Compliance and Administration to ensure regional alignment.

Supervisor Responsibilities:

• Country Director, Ethiopia
• Country Director, Ghana
• Regional Director, E. Africa
• CEO, Bahir Dar Specialty Eye Center
• Support indirect supervision of Country Staff
• Build an engaged and talented team to meet expanding regional needs via recruiting and training new staff.
• Motivate and develop a strong regional team through effective coaching and leadership, including constructive and timely performance evaluations and regular check-ins, as well as administrative oversight of timesheets, reimbursements, and travel approval requests.
• Participate in the annual budget, planning, and goal-setting process.

Other Responsibilities:

• Other duties as assigned, dependent on organizational needs and employee skills.
• All employees are expected to work as a team and to contribute to any activity that will promote the success of the organization.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required Skills/Knowledge/Abilities:

• Passion to represent the program; to create and maintain effective working relationships with hospital partners, NGOs, subject matter experts, government personnel and donors from a variety of sectors.
• Demonstrated ability to lead people and projects to achieve outstanding results; willingness and ability to seek creative solutions to deliver impact even if a path is not initially clear.
• Ability to represent and communicate an idea, a project, or an organization in any medium and to a variety of audiences, including blog posts, email, team meetings, speaking engagements, and pitch meetings, to name a few.
• Collaborative approach to working with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives.
• Ability to quickly understand new, often clinical or technical, concepts at an appropriate level for this role.
• Commitment to excellence demonstrated through production of high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity.
• Willingness and ability to work across multiple time zones, including participating in morning and evening calls.
• Willingness and ability to travel globally up to 30% of the time.

Education and/or Equivalent Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 10 years’ experience in global health or development program management or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Proven experience in the introduction and scaling of global health capacity building programs in low and middle-income countries.
• Experience managing and leading a diverse team of geographically distributed employees in a matrixed environment. Established cultural competency in partnering with racial, cultural and linguistically diverse groups.
• Demonstrated success in grants management, project management and donor reporting; experience with multilateral/bi-lateral USAID-funded projects is preferred.

Additional qualifications include:

• Excitement to join a nonprofit institution poised to expand global operations.
• Outgoing personality that can collaborate with a variety of personalities at all levels of the organization, building relationships and shared goals across departments and partner organizations.
• A sense of discretion and a high degree of professionalism is required, ability to maintain confidentiality of highly sensitive information.
• Strong interpersonal, communication, facilitation, and presentation skills.
• Detail oriented and able to efficiently prioritize tasks.
• Flexibility to adjust and contribute to continually evolving work situations and changing priorities.
• Excellent computer skills and technical aptitude, proficient with Google Workspace and MS Office.
• Committed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion.

Physical requirements:

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at a time.

HCP Cureblindness encourages applications from people of all races, religions, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and ages, as well as veterans and individuals with disabilities.