Consultant Portfolio Management Education Outcomes Fund

There are few greater challenges faced by the global community than the twin crises of learning poverty and youth unemployment. In response, the Education Commission (chaired by Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy for Global Education) and the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (chaired by Sir Ronald Cohen) came together with our founding CEO (Her Excellency Dr.) Amel Karboul to create EOF. We aim to improve the education and employment outcomes of 10 million children and youth, by supporting governments to utilize a range of innovative finance instruments at scale, including outcomes funds and other results-based financing (RBF) instruments.

EOF supports improvements in the quality of education and skills programs, with a special focus on girls and underserved populations, including those in the hardest to reach rural areas. It measures (and pays for) what matters – both core skills like literacy and numeracy, but also critical 21st Century skills such as socio-emotional skills, ICT skills, and other broader fundamentals of a quality education. It helps close the persistent gap between the skills needed by employers and those attained by today’s youth.

For all the above, EOF pays primarily on the basis of the results achieved, ensuring that taxpayer-funded domestic resources, aid, and philanthropic funds are only used to pay for what works. This is a game-changing way to finance results in education, focusing attention and realigning systems on the most challenging but most important measure of a program’s performance: whether it is improving lives.

Together with our supporters, we believe this is the early stages of a much larger movement, with huge potential to increase learning outcomes for children and youth around the world, though improved aid effectiveness and government spending.

Since our inception in 2018, EOF has:

• Partnered with governments in Ghana and Sierra Leone to establish the two largest outcomes funds to date in developing countries, mobilising ~$50M for these programs.
• Established itself as a leading global player in RBF, and the only dedicated center of expertise for RBF in education and skills.
• Become the first outcomes fund hosted by the United Nations within UNICEF, as a scalable platform to partner with governments around the world.
• Established a major partnership with the LEGO Foundation, to develop a scale portfolio of RBF programs in early childhood across a diverse range of countries, as well as to amplify the movement and ecosystem of partners around this approach.
• Had our innovative approach featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, FT, Economist, Brookings, and more.
• Built our institutional capacity to contract and implement large-scale outcomes funds more efficiently and effectively than historic impact bonds.
• Established a strong culture of performance and an active focus on ongoing professional development for all our team.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have… 

• An advanced university degree in business, economics, political science, finance, international development, public policy, education or a related field is required.
• A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in international development, charity or public sectors, strategic consulting, think-tanks/research institutes, investment or development banking.
• Experience managing grant programs with required reporting requirements is required. Experience managing large complex projects (>10M USD) is an asset.
• Experience and expertise in education or skills & employment programs is required.
• Experience working at a senior level with governments and donors (comfortable working with and engaging at a C-Suite or Ministerial level) is required.

Source:  https://jobs.unicef.org/cw/en-us/job/572275