Director for Country Support, Health Unit

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive, recover and rebuild their lives. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure.

The IRC’s vision is that the impact of our programs and the influence of our ideas empowers those caught in crisis to make lasting change in their lives. To support achievement of this vision, the IRC’s Technical Excellence (TE) unit provides technical assistance to IRC’s country program staff and shares what we learn to influence policy and practice. The TE unit supports technical excellence through the following ways:

1) Guide program design to achieve outcomes by incorporating the best available evidence

2) Build technical capacity of country program staff to implement, measure and continuously improve programs

3) Influence the IRC, peer agencies and donors to use proven interventions and generate new evidence to achieve change in peoples’ lives

The TE Unit is comprised of five technical Units, all of which have deep expertise in their respective sectors: Education, Economic Wellbeing, Governance, Health, Violence Prevention and Response, while cross-cutting work happens with the Gender Equality Unit and the Research & Innovation Unit

The health technical unit (HTU) is organized in three sectors; Health (integrating general primary healthcare including sexual and reproductive health, child health, mental health & Psycho-Social Support), Environmental Health and Nutrition. In 2020 the health technical unit supported programming in 6 regions and 34 countries.

Job Overview / Summary:

The Director, Health Unit is responsible for ensuring high quality, effectively coordinated technical assistance support to IRC’s country programs, leading a team of senior Technical Advisors, Technical advisors and specialists. He or she will lead the development and implementation of technical norms and standards, and work with the Health Unit team leaders to enforce these standards and ensuring high performing services to country programs. She/he will be accountable for aligning the Health Unit with the technical assistance model and S100 priorities and that the Health Unit has a strong collaborative relationship with regional and country program staff.

The Director, country support is a key senior leadership position within the Health Unit and will serve on the unit’s senior leadership team. This position is expected to provide significant leadership and representation at the HQ level, and will also be responsible for representing the TU externally, as designated by the Senior Technical Director.

Major Responsibilities:

1. Be accountable for managing and improving the quality of Technical Assistance for Health, Nutrition, Environmental Health, as measured by biannual field and TU surveys. Develop and improve processes to support technical assistance coordination across health teams, ensuring a consistent approach and translating organizational priorities and strategies into concrete activities. Ensure Health teams annually update the Outcomes and Evidence Framework (OEF) in response to field feedback, making sure it remains a live and useful tool.

2. Effectively manage the Senior Technical Advisors (STA) of Health, Nutrition, Environmental Health by leading by example. Provide guidance and supervision, oversee robust onboarding, discuss job expectations, set objectives and provide appropriate and timely feedback, including full implementation of the staff performance management process.

3. Lead the Measurement team and ensure that TAs are appropriately resourced to support the field with data collection, monitoring and course-correction of projects.

4. Collaborate with Director of Strategic Initiative, Emergency Health to define and prioritize high-impact interventions and the approach to achieve them, including the tools, partnerships, donor engagement and capacity-building required.

5. Support the Senior Health Director to define Health leadership and influence priorities. Work with Senior Technical Director (TD) to set focused policy and practice goals for health unit, working to prioritize across many possible areas and assure IRC’s perspective is channeled in essential global health and humanitarian fora. Represent the IRC and Health externally with partners and policy-makers.

6. Contribute to business development process for the Health Unit, including identifying opportunities, representing the unit to donors and successfully raising grant-funding.

7. Stand in for the Senior Health Director during absences.

8. Maintain a collaborative relationship with other IRC teams and departments in pursuit of the responsibilities above, including other technical units for areas of joint interest such as mental health, and the Program Delivery Department on the provision of quality technical assistance.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Senior Health Director

Position directly supervises the leaders for the following teams:

1. Health Senior Technical Advisors

2. Environmental Health Senior Technical Advisor

3. Nutrition Senior Technical Advisor for Nutrition

4. Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Advisor

Qualifications

• Minimum ten years progressive experience in the public health sector, including experience providing remote technical support

• Masters of public health; clinical degree (MD, MBBS, or RN) a plus

• Demonstrated excellence experience and ability managing teams and individuals

• Ability to give feedback in a constructive way that supports staff improvement; ability to receive feedback and adjust behavior

• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate effectively in a multi-cultural environment

• Solid organizational skills: the ability to be flexible and work well under pressure, dealing with competing priorities, in a fast-paced team environment;

• Demonstrated excellence in multi-tasking, time management, and flexibility;

• Interest in and ability to think and plan at the ‘big picture’ level;

• Fluent in English; French or Arabic language a plus

Working Environment:

The position is based in New York

Travel Expectation: Regular travel at least 30% of time to monitor and improve quality of support to country programs and to engage with donors.