Research Center Senior Director

📋 Description

• • Shape the future of global development as the Research Center Senior Director at FHI 360, where you will architect and drive a bold, multi-year vision that turns Big Global Challenges (BGCs) into measurable impact across health, education, economic development, and climate resilience.
• • Own the full strategic lifecycle—from market intelligence and evidence curation to resource mobilization and thought-leadership campaigns—ensuring every initiative advances FHI 360’s mission to help people everywhere lead full and healthy lives.
• • Translate high-level organizational strategy into an actionable 3-year operational plan for the Research Center, integrating it seamlessly with the 3-Year Resource Mobilization Plan to unlock new funding streams and partnerships worth tens of millions of dollars.
• • Serve as the public face and authoritative voice of the Center, representing FHI 360 at global forums, donor roundtables, academic conferences, and high-level government briefings, thereby amplifying the organization’s reputation and influence.
• • Identify and prioritize emerging market opportunities by synthesizing geopolitical trends, donor appetites, and FHI 360’s comparative advantages, then mobilize cross-functional teams to design winning proposals and innovative program models.
• • Curate, commission, and disseminate rigorous evidence—leveraging both primary research and secondary data—to demonstrate impact, refine program strategies, and position the Center as a go-to knowledge hub for BGC solutions.
• • Build and nurture high-performing Communities of Practice that unite internal experts, external researchers, policymakers, and private-sector innovators, fostering continuous learning and rapid diffusion of best practices across 60+ countries.
• • Forge strategic partnerships with multilateral banks, bilateral donors, Fortune 500 companies, and leading NGOs, negotiating joint ventures, co-funding agreements, and knowledge-sharing alliances that expand the Center’s reach and resources.
• • Provide hands-on leadership to a multidisciplinary team of economists, epidemiologists, educators, data scientists, and partnership specialists, coaching two senior direct reports and dozens of matrixed staff toward ambitious performance targets.
• • Champion a culture of innovation, psychological safety, and evidence-based decision-making, instituting agile workflows, learning sprints, and impact dashboards that keep the Center at the cutting edge of international development practice.
• • Navigate complex stakeholder landscapes—balancing donor compliance, government priorities, community needs, and ethical considerations—to deliver programs that are equitable, scalable, and financially sustainable.
• • Oversee the design and execution of flagship initiatives that serve as proof-of-concept for new theories of change, then package lessons learned into scalable toolkits, policy briefs, and open-source data platforms.
• • Drive annual resource-mobilization targets by cultivating a robust pipeline of opportunities, leading capture planning, and personally shepherding high-stakes proposals from concept to award in collaboration with business development teams.
• • Ensure seamless integration between the Research Center and other FHI 360 divisions—Global Health, Education, Social Marketing, and Data Science—leveraging shared assets and avoiding duplication to maximize collective impact.
• • Uphold FHI 360’s safeguarding, ethics, and diversity commitments, embedding rigorous risk-management protocols and inclusive practices into every Center activity and partnership.