Director of Policy, Learning and Advisory Services

Background

Interpeace is an international organisation for peacebuilding. Interpeace tailors its approach to each society and ensures that its work is locally designed and driven. Through local partners and its own local teams, Interpeace jointly develops peacebuilding programmes based on extensive consultation and research. Interpeace helps establish processes of change that promote sustainable peace, social cohesion and resilience. The organisation’s work is designed to connect and promote understanding between local communities, civil society, governments and the international community.

Interpeace also assists the international community – especially the United Nations – to play a more effective role in peacebuilding based on the organisation’s expertise in field-based work at the grassroots level. This is achieved primarily through contributing innovative thought leadership and fresh insights into contemporary peacebuilding policy. This assistance to the international community is also achieved through its ‘peace responsiveness’ work, in which Interpeace provides advice and practical support to other international organisations (especially those in the security, development and humanitarian aid sectors) so that they adapt systemically in order that their own work simultaneously addresses conflict dynamics and strengthens peace dynamics.

Interpeace is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and has offices around the world.

For more information about Interpeace, please visit www.interpeace.org

Position within the Organisation

The Director of Policy, Learning and Advisory Services is responsible for two key functions:

• to lead Interpeace’s policy and thought leadership on peacebuilding as well as the organisation’s learning agenda, including monitoring and evaluation; and,
• to provide strategic direction and oversee the management of Interpeace’s expert advisory services that combine the organisation’s local peacebuilding experience and knowledge with latest international thinking and practice. This includes both ‘peace responsiveness’ and other peacebuilding advice, policy and support provided by the organisation’s in-house advisory team as well as the strategic and capacity-strengthening peacebuilding services provided by external experts in the Interpeace Advisory Team (IPAT).

Through these core responsibilities, the Director contributes to ensuring a strong connection between Interpeace’s field-based peacebuilding programmes and its policy engagement, and also contributes to the creation and promotion more widely of effective contemporary international peacebuilding practice and policy.

The Director is part of the Global Management Team and has close working relationships with all the institutional job families of Interpeace including Programmes, Programme Development and Innovation, Strategic Partnerships, Communications and Operations as well as the Executive Management office. The Director reports to the Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer.

The Director has up to six direct reports at any time. Occasionally, the role may involve supervising temporary consultants.

The Director is also responsible for leading and coordinating Interpeace’s institutional policy agenda and engagement which is advanced through the Policy Working Group (PWG).

Purpose and General Overview

The Director is a leader and senior manager, whose primary role is to inspire, motivate, coordinate and ensure the quality and productivity of work by others in the Policy, Learning and Advisory Services team. In doing so, there is also a need to liaise closely with other leaders and managers in the organisation, particularly to ensure that Interpeace’s field-based work as well as its policy development and thought leadership are well aligned and mutually reinforcing, and to ensure that Interpeace continues to meet the highest possible standards of good governance. To these ends, the Director participates actively and contributes in wider corporate direction-setting, policy-making and decision-making and ownership as a member of the Global Management Team. The Director also fosters the welfare of her/his team.

The Director is responsible for leading and achieving delivery of aspects of Interpeace’s five-year 2021-2025 Strategy relating to policy, learning and advisory services. The Director also contributes to both the design and execution of Interpeace’s annual workplans and budgets which are intended to achieve the goals of the Strategy.

The key domains over which the Director provides strategic guidance and oversight are:

• Policy and thought leadership
• Research
• Learning, including monitoring and evaluation
• Advisory Services

The Director fosters collaboration between the staff working in each of these domains, and is responsible for identifying and advancing institutional partnerships, income-generation opportunities and other avenues for raising the relevance, profile and impact of Interpeace’s work in these domains.

The Director also fosters the welfare of her/his team taking into account the geographical locations of the team worldwide.

The Director establishes and maintains communication and consultation structures internally within Interpeace, chairing the Policy Working Group.

The Director leads in creating the environment in which the organisation’s strategic direction on its policy, research and learning agendas are developed, finalised and periodically reviewed, ensuring alignment of these agendas with the organisation’s five-year Strategy and decision-making framework. The Director also leads in ensuring delivery of agreed policy, research and learning agendas, ensuring a pipeline of practical content. The learning agenda in particular is advanced through the Director fostering close coordination of her/his team with field-based peacebuilding staff and communications staff.

The Director maintains a wide external network of policymakers and practitioners. The Director represents Interpeace to diverse external audiences and representatives of institutional partners including peacebuilding policymakers, and practitioners in government and intergovernmental, academic and civil society organisations.

Whilst the Director is expected primarily to have strong leadership and management skills, the role-holder is also expected to have and be able to contribute strong domain knowledge of peacebuilding policy and practice.

The role is based in Geneva with occasional travel.

Duties and responsibilities

Team Leadership and Management

• Direct and supervise all members of staff of the Policy, Learning and Advisory Services Unit, creating and sustaining an enabling work environment that motivates and that also is responsive to individual and collective circumstances.
• Monitor, evaluate and manage team performance and individual performance of direct reports bearing staff development in mind.
• Mentor and coach staff.

Unit Management and Delivery

• Lead in developing the Unit’s overarching goals, strategic plans, methodologies, and action plans that contribute to achieving Interpeace’s mandate, five-year Strategy and annual Workplans.
• Lead in establishing a multi-year policy agenda, ensuring its alignment with the organisation’s five-year Strategy and decision-making framework.
• Lead in ensuring implementation of the agreed policy agenda, including a pipeline of practical content/outputs, and also ensuring adaptation of the agenda in response to new and emerging circumstances.
• Monitor trends in the peacebuilding community and environment at the global and regional levels; identify opportunities for Interpeace to contribute policy and thought leadership; and, develop and advance new peacebuilding policy initiatives accordingly.
• Provide strategic guidance and oversee the development and delivery of a medium-term business plan for IPAT.
• Oversee the development and delivery of a research agenda that contributes to policy development, enhances the quality of Interpeace’s field-based peacebuilding, and contributes to Interpeace’s innovation and thought leadership in peacebuilding.
• Oversee and direct team to ensure successful delivery of existing policy programmes including and not limited to ‘Rethinking Stabilisation’, ‘Peace Responsiveness’, and ‘Policy to Practice on Youth Peace and Security’.
• Promote the implementation of robust, evidence-based learning, monitoring and evaluation that is aligned with the Change Framework and through which institutional learning is fed back positively into programme design and into communication outputs by Interpeace.
• Manage budgets and human resources, including exercising delegated authority for financial approvals and personnel contracting, in accordance with Interpeace’s policies and regulations.
• Advise the Chief Operating Officer on measures required to ensure agreed Unit goals are achieved and work is delivered in envisaged timeframes and budgets.
• Ensure reporting and accountability requirements for Unit performance and delivery are met.

Organisational Impact

• Participate as a member of the Global Management Team in advising on the strategic direction of Interpeace, and on its policy orientations and role in the international peacebuilding architecture.
• Contribute to organisation-wide policies, procedures and measures that respond to the health, wellbeing and safety and security needs of staff, and share in their communication/dissemination, explanation, promotion and ownership by senior management collectively.
• Chair the Policy Working Group and lead it in co-creating and advancing institution-wide contemporary peacebuilding policy that is aligned with the five-year Strategy and decision-making framework.
• Advance a culture of learning in the organisation, including fostering knowledge management systems, and information sharing platforms across Interpeace that are widely used by staff.
• Contribute to internal communications amongst staff.
• Contribute to setting and maintaining high standards of quality in governance, management and collaborative team-working in Interpeace.

External Relations

• Represent Interpeace in conferences, workshops, symposiums, other fora and the media where relevant in order to share the organisation’s experience and know-how, and to position the organisation within the international peacebuilding community.
• Build and sustain networks of contacts.
• Develop institutional relationships and partnerships with international institutions and organisations that contribute to the achievement of Interpeace’s strategic goals.
• Support the dissemination of information within the organisation and to external actors, including contributing to Interpeace’s external communications.

Knowledge Management

• Contribute to the development of institutional content on peacebuilding policy and practice (such as through policy notes, internal position papers, and scholarly articles).
• Develop, in coordination with other Directors, tools for evidence-based monitoring, evaluation and reporting on the delivery and impact of Interpeace’s work, including ensuring delivery of input to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
• Lead and contribute to institutional reporting on the execution of Interpeace’s work building on consolidated data from monitoring and evaluation as well as the Change Framework.

Qualifications:

Education

• Tertiary qualification in social or political sciences, international relations, management or other relevant fields.

Experience

• At least 15 years of experience working in international organisations, NGOs, and/or international consultancies
• Experience in a research or policy environment within an intergovernmental, government or NGO setting.
• Experience implementing or working with peacebuilding or development projects in the field.
• Experience managing a team including staff and financial management and business plan development.

Competencies

• Advanced technical competency and deep domain knowledge in peacebuilding, peace and conflict issues and in international affairs.
• Ability to apply peacebuilding principles and approaches to design policies and initiatives, including in other fields (e.g. humanitarian assistance and development fields).
• Knowledge of and ability to apply management principles as they relate to multi-cultural and complex organisations.
• Capable of connecting disparate but related themes of work, an entrepreneurial mindset, ready to innovate and adapt new ways of working.
• Ability to explain complex strategies and approaches clearly and convincingly to external audiences.
• Ability to work in a multicultural environment successfully and to demonstrate gender-responsive and non-discriminatory behaviour and attitudes.
• Fluent in English; knowledge of French and/or other UN languages desirable.
• Interpeace Competencies
  • Collaboration and Weaving
  • Communication
  • Drive for results
  • Adaptability and Continuous Learning
  • Respect for Diversity

Other terms of employment

• Interpeace values diversity among its staff and aims to achieve gender equality both through gender parity at all levels of the organisation and promoting gender equality in all its work. We welcome applications from people of all genders, those with disabilities, and those with experience of conflict and violence.
• Gross annual salary: CHF 172 000 to max. CHF 177 000 (salary commensurate with experience and internal salary grid). In addition, a health insurance contribution and other benefits are provided.