Hybrid- Director of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI)

Counterpart International is looking for a Director of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI). This is a highly technical leadership role. It sits within our Women’s Empowerment Practice area and requires international development experience. The GESI Director is responsible for successfully supporting GESI integration mainstreaming across the organization, such as creating standards, tools and other capacity strengthening infrastructure, and quality assurance systems across projects and practice areas. This includes working with different organizational stakeholders, partners, project teams and donors to ensure consistent high quality of GESI analyses and action plans, design and implementation of GESI activities, and monitoring and evaluation of GESI indicators for USAID, USDA, State Department and other donor-funded projects. The GESI Director will work with staff across projects and throughout the organization to help advance GESI deliverables, strengthen GESI integration capacity and ensure cohesion and alignment with other organizational priorities, including but not limited to Ethics and Compliance; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB); and Safeguarding.

Duties include leading or supporting the completion of GESI analyses and resulting action plans; designing new GESI tools, trainings and indicators to help staff, consultants and partners build skills and meet their goals; coaching GESI technical specialists and consultants on GESI integration; giving technical input on GESI in new business development (NBD) processes and proposals as needed; collaborating with the MEL team and project staff on GESI integrated MEL plans; working with HR to recruit and maintain a roster of GESI consultants; helping to supervise and coordinate short-term technical assistance (STTA) with those consultants; supporting GESI thought leadership and knowledge product development; and helping to align GESI work with the overall organizational strategy and WE practice sub-strategy.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the WE leadership team to lead the strategic co-design and organizational use of GESI standards, tools, evaluation metrics and capacity strengthening initiatives.
• Lead the GESI technical pillar by incorporating technical offerings into existing programs across portfolios.
• Lead, supervise, and help provide quality assurance on the design and/or execution of GESI analyses, action plans, activities, MEL plans, and impact evaluations.
• Collaborate with the WE NBD Specialist and Senior Director of WE to create GESI-related NBD tools, systems and capacity strengthening initiatives as needed.
• Work closely with the Resilient Food Systems practice and other practices and departments to help develop signature GESI and WE approaches, tools, and activities for USDA and other donors where it is not required but can help advance existing project goals and activities.
• Collaborate with the WE leadership team on supporting internal GESI learning and a WE and GESI community of practice.
• Serve on proposal development teams as needed.
• Lead GESI capacity strengthening initiatives with staff, consultants and interns. Design and implement GESI capacity-building interventions in coordination with project teams and local partners.
• Work with internal and external experts to develop and design high-quality GESI training curricula and capacity-strengthening approaches. Conceptualize and develop GESI training materials (manuals, workbooks, facilitator guides).
• Work with the WE leadership team to develop and champion the use of cutting-edge tools and resources for WE, leadership, and GESI.
• Support GESI related thought leadership events and coalition participation and advocacy efforts as needed.
• Collaborate with Communications to support GESI related social media posts, communications products and other deliverables.
• Encourage a work culture of excellence, integrity, and accountability, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, consistent with Counterpart’s core values.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in international affairs, international development, gender equality, or related field required. Masters’ degree preferred.
• Minimum of 12 years of technical work experience and demonstrated excellence in leading GESI integration efforts in international development programming.
• 5 years of experience leading high quality GESI analyses, with at least 3 of those years leading USAID project or program GESI analyses.
• Experience with USAID and other NBD processes and integrating GESI technical components.
• Demonstrated commitment to and substantial experience in designing and facilitating participatory, inclusive, accessible, learner-centered methodologies for both training and capacity strengthening.
• Outstanding program management skills including a commitment to technical excellence, a demonstrated track record in achieving programmatic results, and a deep understanding of financial and management compliance.
• Demonstrated success as an entrepreneurial and creative thinker who has the drive and vision to develop, define, and expand GESI programming and mainstreaming initiatives.
• Strong interpersonal skills, including working with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures; 3+ years overseas experience strongly preferred.
• Excellent written and verbal cross-cultural communication skills.
• Ability to set priorities and work in a fast-paced environment with multiple competing deadlines.
• Self-starter with ability to take initiative, use independent judgment, and lead the development of a major initiative.
• Team player who works well with diverse colleagues and can coordinate well across multiple teams.
• Available for international travel up to 25% of the time.
• Ability to work out of Washington, DC office in person two times per week when not traveling.
• Experience designing, implementing or evaluating GESI deliverables for DOS or USDA projects is a plus.
• Fluency in French or Spanish is desired.

The salary range for this position is $116,497 to $186,395 annually.