Country: Liberia
Closing date: 31 Aug 2017
Country Director, Liberia
Last Mile Health’s mission is to save lives in the world’s most remote communities. We aim to deliver high-quality primary health services to more than one million people living in the most remote communities by partnering with governments to deploy, sustain, and manage national networks of community health professionals. As part of its recovery effort after the end of the Ebola outbreak, the Liberia Ministry of Health has prioritized launching a national community health workforce able to prevent, diagnose, and treat the most life-threatening health conditions. Working side-by-side, LMH and the MOH are designing and implementing a national roll-out of a network of community health workers to stretch the country’s primary health services to the most rural communities to improve maternal and child health and serve as a front-line response for future outbreaks. We envision a world in which there is a health worker for everyone, everywhere, every day.
POSITION SUMMARY:
Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), the Monrovia-based Country Director is responsible for the development and attainment of LMH Liberia’s annual performance targets, maintaining robust policies and systems, and overseeing the senior management team to ensure quality operations, staff morale and a culture of accountability. The Country Director will lead the Senior Management Team and guide them in developing and effectively executing clear operational plans. The Country Director will work with the Senior Management Team, and especially the Director of National Community Health Systems and County Managers, to identify evolving risks and opportunities to operational plans and objectives and will confer with the COO when a shift in strategy is advisable to ensure achievement of operational targets. S/he will collaborate closely with the Senior Management Team to engage and collaborate closely with MOH and other key stakeholders to advance the National Community Health Assistant (NCHA) Program, including financing of the NCHA Program and elements of the program directly executed by Last Mile Health. The Country Director is the most senior LMH staff person in Liberia, ultimately responsible for offices in three counties and a staff of 180 persons during a period of programmatic and operational growth of the organization.
ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:
● Ensure LMH Liberia meets or exceeds its annual performance targets. Lead the production of annual work plans that align with strategic objectives, overall resources available and detailed budgets produced. Develop, track, and manage against key performance indicators for LMH Liberia. Organize and lead monthly review meetings, weekly Senior Management Team meetings, and support individual senior managers to ensure all functions to deliver on their department’s annual targets.
● Maintain robust financial, administrative, operations and human resource policies and systems, ensuring that they are aligned with LMH’s global policies and compliant with local laws. Work with the Deputy Country Director to develop and manage the LMH Liberia budget and oversee the financial and operational management of the Liberia office.
● Oversee and lead the country team: In collaboration with LMH’s Senior Management Team, ensure a successful partnership with the Liberia MOH to implement the roll-out of a national community health worker program. With the Deputy Country Director, support functional leads – programs, human resources, operations, finance, grants management, programs, research, monitoring and evaluation and partnerships and county managers – to set and deliver on annual targets and operational plans.
● Ensure capacity development and communication: Provide coaching and developing senior leadership and ensuring that all of LMH’s Liberia-based employees receive guidance, support and professional development to perform in their roles. Lead monthly staff town hall meetings and ensure open, bi-directional communication across staff at all levels of the organization.
● Support management of relationships with key partners: Support LMH’s Program Director and Program team to develop relationships with key technical programmatic partners, including Liberia’s Ministry of Health and donors. Identify and establish relationships with new operational partners as appropriate, and participate in high-level negotiations with government and non-government partners at the national and county level.
● Provide strong support to the development team in resource mobilization efforts for Liberia, including providing timely and effective oversight of the financial position of the country programs, ensuring effective and coordinated donor reporting and grant management, and developing and maintaining strong relationships with in-country donors.
● Promote LMH’s organizational values at all levels of the organization, ensuring alignment across functional areas and field sites in a fashion that ultimately advances Last Mile Health’s objective to expand patient services in remote areas.
Qualifications:
● Advanced degree in international development, health, or business with minimum of 7 years of management experience in the private or public sector, with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership; or Bachelor’s degree or equivalent plus 10 years of work experience
● Proven experience as a strong leader with an ability to mentor and manage a team for consistently high performance. Experience managing large teams (50+ persons) and/or overseeing teams across multiple sites
● Demonstrated experience acquiring and managing multilateral/bilateral contract funding with achievement of positive past performance references.
● Work and/or educational background in public health or rural development
● Experience with large grantees like USAID, DFID, CDC
● Highly motivated, independent, dynamic and entrepreneurial thinker with strong managerial experience and interpersonal skills
● Excellent written and oral communication skills, and a track record of consensus building and managing relationships with a range of stakeholders across sectors
● 5+ years experience living and working in resource-limited setting, ideally in West Africa, and willingness to learn in a culturally diverse work environment
● Excellent diplomacy skills, work ethic, and flexibility
● Ability to demonstrate high performance conceiving, planning, and executing on complex programs in unstructured and demanding environments
● Demonstrated strong problem solving, analytical and quantitative skills, including high level of proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and internet applications
● Alignment with the values and culture of LMH and ability to promote those values across the organization.
● Minimum 20% travel, including regular visits to LMH’s program sites in rural and remote communities
Preferred Qualifications:
● Professional experience in community health, health workforce management in a public health, health systems strengthening, or private health sector setting
● Experience building and cultivating relationships with government officials and multilateral organizations
REPORTING RELATIONSHIPS:
REPORTS DIRECTLY TO: Chief Operating Officer
WORKS DIRECTLY WITH: HQ-based, Monrovia and Field-based Program, Operations, Development, Finance and Technical Support Units,
SUPERVISES DIRECTLY: Deputy Country Director, Program Director, Executive Coordinator, County Managers
Commitment: Minimum 24-month commitment
Location: Monrovia, Liberia
Apply: Applications accepted on a rolling basis via Last Mile Health website
How to apply:
Apply on our website at https://careers-lastmilehealth.icims.com/jobs/1024/country-director/job