Chief of Staff

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

About Pula:

At Pula, we are radically restructuring agricultural insurance, using technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured, untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide.

We work in over 17 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2022, we have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 6.5 million farmers across Kenya, India, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Malawi. Since raising our Series A our operations have expanded globally including now Asia and Latin America. Our team size is now 100 permanent  employees and up to 1,000 contracted staff.

Pula is fast-paced, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges. We are a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, our ways of working are informed by our Pula DNA, our culture. The Pula DNA is represented in four pillars as indicated below:

• Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
• Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
• Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
• We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

What you will be doing:

You will be a partner to the CEO in driving Pula’s short, medium and long-term strategic and operational goals thereby enabling the management team to deliver on expected results.

Your job is to make the most of the CEO time and effort. You will manage their schedule, helping to decide priorities and making sure things happen and are followed through to completion. With a thorough understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish, you’ll plan and manage complex trips to interesting places in a way that anticipates needs and furthers the mission. You’ll be part of conversations with a wide range of government officials, investors, social entrepreneurs, funders, thinkers, and doers of various stripes who meet and collaborate with the CEO. Your main mission is to meet the needs of the CEO, but sometimes you’ll work with others on the team to help pull together and coordinate various events and side projects.

This is a chance to be at the center of a thriving network of people working to make a difference in the world. The job would be a great fit for someone eager to excel in an executive support role in return for the opportunity to learn about – and play an important role in – the world of social entrepreneurs and high-impact start-ups.

Who you are:

Your background is only a bonus to what we are looking for. If you have a knack for helping leaders achieve sharp gains in productivity and impact, commitment to our mission and embrace a constantly changing portfolio of projects, then you will excel at this role!

And in this particular job, you need to be:

• A self-starter
• A project Manager
• Problem solver
• Strong project executor
• very organized, obsessed with details, and good with people
• habitually and instinctively helpful
• able to anticipate needs and adjust plans on the fly
• hard to rattle and ready to laugh
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• able to make others feel comfortable

You’ll enjoy this role if you value working in a self-governed environment, thrive under a loose management style and are an independent team player. While you’ll get all the support you require, we need a problem solver, someone you can hand off a job to and know that it will be taken to completion. You are needed and will be highly appreciated.

Above all, you must be enthused about an active support role.

Basic Responsibilites:

• Leverage your business background to design and implement strong systems, processes and company rituals that will drive performance and collaboration throughout the organization.
• Lead Pula’s operational cadence, including Monthly Townhalls meetings, Senior Management Meeting Team Weekly, and Quarterly Business Reviews.
• Manage the CEO’s time closely to ensure it is spent on the top priorities for the company. This could include weekly calendar audits and a daily standup to sync on priorities.
• Partner with key stakeholders across product, marketing, sales, and customer experience to drive product and business strategy by synthesizing insights and setting actionable plans.
• Act as an extension of the CEO and funnel appropriate information across the leadership team by exercising both exceptional relationship building skills as well as excellent discretion and judgment.
• Act as a gatekeeper, seek to help the CEO optimize their time by working closely with other expense work with firm members and teams across Pula to  leaders to drive  strategy implementation.
• Run leadership meetings and off sites, and ensure that relevant information is disseminated appropriately across the company.
• Support the CEO with the development of board/meeting/ conference materials and investor communications as needed.

What you need to have to be successful:

• Black-belt organizational skills.
• Requisite technology skills to accomplish the above.
• Significant experience managing something relevant to the above.
• A relevant graduate degree is a plus; a Bachelor’s degree is required.

*Candidates based out of Kenya should be willing to relocate to Kenya for this role