Senior Operations Officer

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a multilateral financial mechanism created in 1991 to provide grant and concessional funds to recipient countries for projects and programs that address biodiversity loss, climate change mitigation and adaptation, degradation of international waters, land and forests, ozone depletion, elimination or reduction of persistent organic pollutants and mercury, all within the framework of sustainable development. 

The GEF unites 186 countries in partnership with international institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives. An independently operating financial organization, GEF is the designated financial mechanism for five international environmental conventions: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Minamata Convention on Mercury. GEF is also a designated financial mechanism of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. 

In the years since its establishment, the GEF has funded over 4,500 projects in 170 countries, and many thousands more through the GEF Small Grants Program, providing $20.5 billion in grants that leveraged $112 billion in co-financing. The GEF Secretariat, construed for administrative purposes as a Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) within the World Bank, has approximately 70 professional and administrative and client support staff. 

The GEF Policy and Operations Unit is responsible for a number of critical corporate functions within the GEF Secretariat (GEFSEC), including: i) preparation and follow up of the Policy Agenda of the GEF Family of Funds and associated council documents; ii) results monitoring and reporting and preparation of key GEF reports; iii) portfolio quality assurance; and iv) the project and program review function to ensure GEF funding proposals adhere to GEF policy and guidance.

Duties and Accountabilities:

GEF is seeking to recruit a seasoned and self-motivated Senior Operations Officer with strong operational implementation experience to support proactive management of the GEF portfolio.
The GEF-8 Replenishment is placing a renewed emphasis on strong implementation oversight through the establishment of the GEF-8 Results Measurement Framework which tracks the effectiveness and efficiency of a portfolio of over 900 projects and programs, renewed portfolio performance and country engagement grounded on data analytics and country engagement. The Senior Operations Officer is expected to build on the foundation established in recent years and to further enhance GEF’s approach, strategy and guidelines on project monitoring and portfolio oversight. 

The ideal candidate would have had experience with conducting analytics and managing complex portfolio management systems in complex operating environment, operational experience in a field relevant to the GEF mandate, as well as exposure to members of the GEF Partnership, in positions with an implementing agency, a government agency or an international organization. Operational experience in implementation and financial management is an advantage. 

This position will involve stewardship of the portfolio oversight and close collaboration on a number of key tasks, including delivery monitoring, operations management deliverables, data quality and data governance. It will involve frequent interaction with staff and management across the GEF Secretariat, Agencies and countries and will provide an opportunity to develop leadership and gain broad exposure to strategic and operational issues across all Regions of the GEF, and the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the business and functioning of the GEF Partnership. The selected candidate will report to the Policy and Operations Manager and will have the opportunity to work closely with experts in different policy and operational fields in the GEFSEC team.
 
Duties:

The successful applicant will work across different areas of the Policy and Operations Division, including in particular Results and Project Review teams. S/he should be able to quickly grasp key corporate and operational issues in various areas, multi-task in a fast-paced work environment, often under tight deadlines, and work effectively across GEF Secretariat and Partnership boundaries. S/he will also perform quality checks on the unit’s various outputs. Tasks include but are not limited to the following: