Deputy Director, Innovations

Role: Deputy Director, Innovations

Reports to: Chief Programs Officer
Location: Nairobi, Kenya

About Living Goods:
Living Goods (LG) is a leading non-profit organization innovatively transforming the health of vulnerable communities. Living Goods leverages a powerful combination of catalytic technology, high-impact training, and quality treatments that empower government community health workers (CHWs) to deliver quality care to their neighbours’ doorsteps. These CHWs also earn meaningful compensation and enhance their stature in the process, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of trust.

The organization prides itself on its agile and quick-footed approach and has embedded experimentation, innovation, and research into its DNA. Additionally, Living Goods pushes itself to account for quantifiable and aggressive targets designed to drive health impact. It is this high performance and innovative culture that has pushed LG to learn, adapt, and optimize its approaches in cases where targets aren’t achieved or when local circumstances change. Consequently, the organization and its impact on the lives of the most vulnerable and underprivileged groups has attracted incredible talent from a multiplicity of backgrounds, expertise, race, and cultures as it grows and expands its footprint.

Background and Team Function
The Innovation Team drives path breaking improvements and new solutions to accelerate impact and efficiency in delivering essential health services at the community level. Fuelled by the smart use of data and analytics, adoption of new technologies and processes, and improved ways of working through partnership, our aim is to develop and scale evidence-based innovations through Living Goods operations, government and wider stakeholders to transform community health systems. Our experiments span quick testing of programmatic improvements to the core Community Health Worker (CHW) model through to more complex research study designs and evaluation of multi-layered or disruptive approaches.

The Opportunity:
The Deputy Director of Innovations will spearhead the organization’s innovation strategy, ensuring it drives measurable health impact, cost efficiency, and scalable solutions for community health. As a thought leader in health impact, digital health and performance management, this role will ensure that the organization stays at the forefront of advancements, fostering a culture of rapid learning and agile implementation.

This role is pivotal in identifying, developing, and executing a robust pipeline of innovations and experiments, while securing the necessary resources through fundraising and partnerships. Additionally, the Deputy Director will represent the organization externally, establishing strategic alliances, and proactively scanning emerging trends and technologies to ensure the organization remains ahead of the curve in its mission to improve community health.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategy

• Develop innovation strategy for the organization in coordination with the Digital Health team to address health challenges and improve service delivery.
• Lead efforts to identify, landscape and cultivate appropriate partnerships to build relevant pipeline idea initiatives in line with strategic plan and innovation strategy.
• Oversee the development and refinement of innovation design to generate evidence of impact, cost effectiveness and scalability.
• Strengthen innovation process, approaches and tools that drive user acceptance and fast learning cycle

Project Delivery and Learnings

• Oversee Project management of key innovation initiatives from concept to implementation and ensure learning cycle is effective balancing results, speed and nimbleness while aligning with organizational goals to deliver measurable outcomes.
• Ensure restricted funding project are timely executed and in full compliance with donor
• Oversee partnership and/ or donor management when relevant
• Ensure innovation work is properly documented and knowledge products are available for visibility
• Identify and research emerging technologies, processes, and market trends relevant to the health sector.
• Develop metrics to track the success of innovation initiatives and make data-driven improvements.
• Present findings and insights to senior management and other stakeholders

People Management

• Recruit manage and develop an effective innovation team
• Bring out the best in people and build a culture of high performance and engagement in line with the organization’s values
• Develop and infuse a UX and innovation culture across the organization while ensuring continuous improvement within the organization through training, workshops, and motivation
• Work closely with cross-functional teams, including Country teams, Global and country PEI team, Digital Health, and external partners, to integrate innovative solutions.

Business Development and Advocacy

• In collaboration with the BD team, drive fundraising efforts to finance innovation initiatives, this will include developing high-quality proposals and partnerships.
• Capture lessons learned by initiatives, develop insights and case studies on innovations to inform future programming, influence policies and practice and increase visibility of Living Goods.
• Engage with prospect and technical funders as well as strategic partners in relation with innovations.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders, including technology providers and other external partners.
• Represent Living Goods in conferences and external meetings

Essential Qualifications, Experience, & Attributes:

• Master’s degree in public health, digital health, Business management, or related field.
• Professional certifications in Digital Health, Project Management desirable.
• At least 13 years of relevant experience with over 7 years experience in managing teams.
• Forward thinking.
• Ability to analyze, comprehend, and articulate the operational goals and strategic plan of the organisation to guide decision-making.
• Provide leadership in effective management and stewardship of programs.
• Ability to communicate both inside and outside the organisation and make formal presentation.
• Interpersonal and leadership skills and high levels of integrity.
• Builds commitment through collaboration, consultation and consideration of the stakeholders and the teams.
• Strong interest in digital health/ experience working in the digital health sector and / or public health innovation, with track record in development and deployment of innovations within private or public sector, including end-to-end management of the innovation cycle.
• Technical knowledge and hands on experience of virtual and data driven solutions within healthcare (i.e. telehealth, e-learning, digitized supply chains).
• Track record in driving organizational learning, knowledge management and documentation of best practices.
• Curiosity

Compensation:
A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience including health insurance and bonus opportunity. The opportunity to be your best while making lives better for those in need.

Living Goods is an equal opportunity employer and will consider every qualified applicant for employment. Living Goods does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Our current job openings are displayed on our website, where you can search for open positions and apply directly. Living Goods does not offer any positions without an interview and never asks candidates for money. If you are asked for money, we strongly recommend that you do not respond and do not send money or personal information. If offered a role at Living Goods, we’ll request consent to complete a background check, which is part of our hiring process.