Insights and Impact Manager - Kenya

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

The Program / Department / Team

Mercy Corps has worked with jobtech for over a decade - investing, supporting product innovation, and conducting research on the opportunities for the sector. In late 2021, Mercy Corps launched the Jobtech Alliance, an ecosystem-building initiative around inclusive jobtech in Africa. We’ve just secured our first dedicated funding for the Jobtech Alliance, and are recruiting a team to expand the Jobtech Alliance as the innovation and learning hub for inclusive jobtech in Africa.

The Position

The Jobtech Alliance Impact and Insights Manager will provide a cross-cutting support to several projects, helping to measure impact, conduct research, synthesize learnings, and develop content required to advance Jobtech Alliance’s results, learning and research agenda. S/he will work across a portfolio of programs to gather, analyse data on the Jobtech Alliance’s impact objectives, monitoring results, as well as supporting its research, learning and adaptive management approach.

In summary, the Expert will:

• Help to manage a learning agenda for inclusive jobtech tech innovation programs.

• Contribute to the results measurement of Jobtech Alliance program by gathering and analysing program related data.

• Developing and implementing research approaches and methodologies in a manner that is adapted to each innovation project’s needs.

• Support the venture building team by supporting the research and learning agenda of innovation sprints through the program lifecycle from shaping research objectives of sprints, collating and analysing emerging data on a regular basis, as well as drafting end-of-project reports on findings.

• Creating knowledge products as a primary author for various forms of audiences and channels, including longform reports, blogs, newsletters and other communication mediums for knowledge products.

• Manage editorial and publication of output from a community of researchers from end-to-end.

Essential Responsibilities

LEARNING AND RESEARCH INSIGHTS

• Contribute to the overall advancement of the learning research agenda for the Jobtech Alliance and advise on learning questions, indicators, and tools to measure impact and drive learning.

• Analyze, synthesize, and produce key insights that can easily inform multiple audiences across the Jobtech Alliance network—from jobtech ventures, donors, and investors to our wider community of stakeholders via storytelling media and platforms

• Support the production of research output in partnership with internal and external stakeholders to share learnings, including blogs and similar products.

• Provide research and analytics support to the venture building team through collating data and insights, leveraging relevant research tools and methodologies to support the innovation sprint learning and research agenda.

IMPACT MEASUREMENT & ADAPTIVE LEARNING

• Deliver results measurement insights on the impact of the Jobtech Alliance’s programmatic work.

• Manage and coordinate implementation of measurement and evaluation systems, including data collection, analysis and report writing of the monitoring and research efforts.

INTERNAL PROJECT COORDINATION

• Participate in internal project coordination and relationship building internally and externally for project planning and systems management, presentations of program insights as needed and at times attend local events, meetings and networking activities.

Who You Are

You are an effective communicator who possesses strong analytical, evaluation design, and methodological skills, and utilizes “right-fit” methods to communicate a rigorous, yet compelling story about the Jobtech Alliance’s impact and the emerging jobtech sector insights.

Supervisory Responsibility

None

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Director, Results, Learning and Research.

Works Directly With: Startups, External partners, Venture Building Managers, Finance team

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in social science, international development, or a related field.

• 3+ years of relevant experience, including experience in research and implementing impact measurement activities for technology startups.

• Demonstrated expertise in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

• Demonstrated familiarity with and understanding of development and monitoring of output, outcome, and impact indicators.

• Excellent communication and writing skills, with a keen ability to synthesize and present complex data in a simple, compelling, meaningful way (ability to produce beautiful and top-notch data visualization is a plus)

• Computer proficiency in word processing, databases, spreadsheets.

• Must be a strong self-starter.

• Ability to complete tasks in a timely manner while balancing several assignments with inputs from multiple team members

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

This role is for people with the right to work in Kenya or Nigeria. Travel will be required 25% of the time and could involve stretches of at least 2 weeks.

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.