Country Director at Alight

Country Director

Reports to Chief Operating & Experience Officer | Full time |

Hello Hello! Alight is recruiting a Country Director for our program in Rwanda. So you’re interested in joining us? Welcome, we’re happy you’re here.

When you Join us, you’ll find…

A team with deep experience in co-designing solutions that create new value around the world. We know we need to always be better, and we believe in the power and abundance of everyday people, everywhere, to change the world with us.

A culture of radical accountability to our customers –as we help build a meaningful life for and with the displaced, we ask them what they want and then deliver on it.

An organization that refuses to settle for anything less than delivering human-worthy services.

If you believe in an abundant world full of amazing people who want to help; in the simple human justice to build a life; and in doing a better thing, then read on!**

Candidates in Rwanda will be given priority for this role, but we are open to candidates from all over the world!

Our Purpose and Work in Rwanda

Our purpose in Rwanda is to support refugees. With support from the government of Rwanda, UNHCR, BPRM and other donors, Alight currently provides critical services in all of the refugee camps across Rwanda. Alight has consistently operated in Rwanda since 1994, and today has a strong and committed team of over eight hundred personnel who include full time staff and incentive workers, and hundreds of community volunteers – implementing programs in Primary Health Care, Reproductive Health, HIV and Nutrition; also Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Shelter and general Infrastructure, Clean Energy, Livelihoods/Economic strengthening, Education, Community Services, Protection, SGBV prevention and response and child protection. Alight work in Rwanda currently covers all the refugee locations and neighboring communities.

The purpose of the Rwanda program is evolving. Alight is an organization committed to doing a better thing and we are seeking a leader to forge a new path for the program. Rwanda is a future-oriented country committed to unleashing human potential. The future Alight program in Rwanda will bravely be better by 1) being radically accountable by consistently collecting (refugee) customer satisfaction data at all service points 2) using that data to make continuous service improvements and 3) using customer insights to co-create better programming. The goal is to emerge with both highly rated services AND a customer accountability model that can be replicated across service points globally.

The success of the Rwanda program in designing and implementing customer-centered services is of the utmost strategic importance to Alight. With support and partnership from the Alight global team, Alight partner organization Kuja Kuja, and the refugees we serve, the Rwanda program will (we hope) emerge as Alight’s model and gold standard of customer-centered service provision. By listening to customers and providing exemplary services, the program will become a beacon inside Alight.

About the Role

As the Country Director, you will lead and manage a successful country program serving refugees and their neighbors across Rwanda. And you must do so in a way that creates a customer-centered, gold-standard services that can be replicated across Alight.

Country Directors serve as enterprise managers responsible for the impact, financial health, and timely delivery of services. They are Alight leaders ensuring the purpose and values of the organization lives inside all work. The Country Directors and programs are surrounded by support from the global team and colleagues in other country programs. They have the opportunity of partnering with the Alight family of organizations (including Questscope, Kuja Kuja, Eastern Congo Initiative, and ORAM).

This is a shared journey; continuous communication with all stakeholders will be key. As a leader inside Alight, the Director must embrace the potential of all people to help – every staff and community member, donor, UNHCR, local and national government. The Rwanda government is the host and it’s critical to not only maintain strong relationships but also align program strategy to national strategy. Promoting and making space for belonging and co-creation inside their team is required.

This position is responsible to work with an internal and external team to determine a desirable, viable, and feasible model for delivering customer-centered and co-created services in Rwandan refugee camps. The purpose is to not only transform services in Rwanda but also arrive at a customer feedback and delivery model that can be scaled across Alight and replicated by other service providers beyond Alight. This is a top organizational priority and the Rwanda team will work closely with partner organization Kuja Kuja, the global M+E, global fundraisers, global technical support, executive team, and consultants to ensure success.

As this is a shared journey and has meaning and consequence globally, the Director must share and nurture a vision of change and inspire staff at every level of the organization to participate in building customer-centered and co-created service models and programs. The Director must also work with all stakeholders to share the vision and invite co-creation. Sharing ownership is not only important philosophically to Alight, it’s often the key to successful and lasting innovation. This role not only requires an openness to people and ideas, but also a commitment to spending the time necessary to communicate and harmonize with all stakeholders. Regular communication with the team in Rwanda, the global team, and to audiences outside Alight is required.

The Rwanda team is already excellent at delivering service and has some experience in both collecting and responding to customer data. The team will need to test new – replicable and scalable – approaches to collecting and acting on data, sharing what is learned, and embracing input from a wide range of stakeholders. The most successful approaches will need to be operationalized country-wide. The most replicable and scalable approaches will be packaged into playbooks and trainings and tested in other Alight service locations.

Essential Responsibilities and Duties:

Country Program Leadership

• Serve as the enterprise leader of the Rwanda Program, responsible for the quality programming, financial health, compliance, and timely delivery of services, reports, and other critical deliverables.
• Ensure that the Rwanda enterprise is Alight and the mission and values of the organization are alive inside the team and the work.
• Create a place of belonging for staff, volunteers, and partners – ensure there is dignified space, employees are seen and heard, and that there are growth opportunities. Follow policies and contribute to organizational goals to ensure diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace and services.
• Fully participate as a member of the global leadership team, responsible for driving refugee-led service improvement across the whole of Alight and beyond. Support and guide the Rwanda and global team to be refugee-centered and co-creative in their work
• Strategically lead the Rwanda team to provide exemplary refugee-led service and become a beacon inside Alight and beyond.
• Lead a stellar Rwanda-based senior management team to meet and exceed expectations of customers, donors, and partners.
• Harmonize with diverse stakeholders who make Alight possible. Work in a measurable and accountable way towards shared purpose and goals.

Customer Accountability

Customer accountability is core to the emergent Rwanda program and to the work of Alight. In this role, you will be expected to lead a team to evolve core refugee camp services through managing to customer satisfaction and implementing customer ideas. We expect the team will set the gold standard for customer accountability and guide other service sites, programs, and organizations forward.

Collect Customer Feedback Data

Alight and Kuja Kuja co-designed and developed a customer feedback tool. Alight uses the Kuja Kuja data collection tool and may use some of their data collection services. The challenge is that the first (amazing) approach we first used to collect data was simply too expensive to scale. One of the first challenges will be to find a fundable, affordable, desirable and feasible method to collect data that can be scaled to services across Alight.

· Desirable and cost-effective continuous data collection: With the M+E team and (when appropriate) Kuja Kuja, determine a more cost-effective method for using the Kuja Kuja tool to continuously collect service data (including both ratings and service improvement ideas). This approach must be scalable inside Alight, which means that it is not only desirable, viable and feasible for service providers in Rwanda but replicable by other teams.

· Budget for and fund data collection. Figure out how to budget for data collection and fund it using existing grants, new grants, or private funds. The solution must be scalable across Rwanda and Alight services globally. This will likely require many iterations and input from across the organization.

Make customer feedback actionable

Kuja Kuja is continuously working to find ways to report on data. The Rwanda team will work with both Kuja Kuja and the global M+E team to make sense of data to identify the urgent concerns, popular ideas, and transformational possibilities. The existing “innovation hour” format will be used to showcase ideas and move them forward. Additional approaches and structures to s service co-cocreation will need to be designed.

· Review data to prioritize and problem solve. The team will work with the global team and Kuja Kuja to design the best approach for synthesizing and reviewing data in order to respond to critical issues and ensure continuous improvement. Reviewing and responding to data will become a daily activity across services. Regular innovation hours will lead to continuous service improvement and transformative service design. Test different approaches to find those that would be most easily replicable and successful at scale.

· Determine how to structure the team and assign responsibility for implementation of customer ideas. Make sure that the responsibility for implementing customer ideas is clearly delegated – including urgent needs and continuous improvements. Be sure staff have what they need to be successful. Explore co-implementation with community business and organizations. Develop the mindset and discipline to do the doable. Understand that approaches must be replicable.

· Track and budget for idea implementation. Track expenses and determine how to budget for urgent need, continuous improvement, and re-design. Implementation must be sufficient to build trust and demonstrate consistent progress. It must also be achievable by teams globally. Work with global support and fundraisers to find new ways to budget in grants and work with donors to cover implementation.

· Be bold in design. There are very real viability and feasibility constraints to scale. But there will also be exciting new opportunities follow the data and co-create new approaches to service design.

Sharing for Accountability and Transformation

Sharing process, designs, and results is a core responsibility of this position. Sharing is core to accountability to customers, partners, and the organization. And sharing allows for replication and iteration by service providers and organizations beyond Rwanda and beyond Alight.

· Report back to the community. Being accountable to customers and the community you serve is core to this work. With the communications and M+E team, ensure that customers and community have clear and consistent access to service ratings and progress. The teams will design, implement, and guide others in the implementation of regular, straight-forward community share backs.

· Share with the public. Customer-led service design is core to becoming Alight and transforming our industry. The team is responsible for making ratings and progress public. Every idea implemented must be tracked and shared. The story of service transformation must be understood across time. Powerful tweaks and transformations should be packaged and shared for others to replicate.

· Replication and scale are key. Rwanda will blaze a path for others to follow. You are responsible to work with global teams, Kuja Kuja, and others to ensure service teams across Alight have a realistic and cost-effective way to collect and respond to customer feedback. Playbooks, trainings and other tools will be created to show others how to operationalize the Rwanda approach.

Ask Big Questions

The Rwanda team is responsible to make space to identify and grapple with hard questions and to raise them inside Alight and beyond. A customer-led approach will raise big questions about not just our services but also how we think about ourselves, our organization, our mission and our industry. It will be your responsibility to make space for these discussions, refine important questions, and share them for others to join the conversation. It’s likely that this questioning will lead to new partnerships and design.

Examples of big questions might include:

· What do customers in refugee camps prioritize and does this differ from staff and technical expert prioritization?

· Are there ways to measure and share individual or community benefits of a customer-led approach to service provision?

· What do customers want that the current structure limits or prevents? What do customers want that can be easily provided in the current context?

Qualities top candidates will possess

To be successful in this role, you must have the humility to truly listen to and trust refugee customers with decision making and design. This role requires country leadership experience, deep connection to service provision, and a strong orientation to change-making. The right person will be focused but also know that lasting change requires going wide and working right alongside colleagues, partners, service providers and customers. Great patience and kindness is expected – especially when leading teams to embrace new ways of working. The mandate is ambitious and will only be advanced by someone willing to believe transformation is both possible and necessary.

Skills and experience we’re seeking

• Deep industry experience – NGO country program leadership, program design and management, and front-line direct service provision desired
• Meaningful experience in serving marginalized communities and demonstrated success at improving the status quo
• Proven ability to work with diverse partners to make great things happen – most important is experience designing with customers but the ability to harmonize and co-create with national governments, bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors, private donors, host communities, local businesses, and global teams is also critical to success
• Patience, curiosity, and openness to try new things and to iterate and refine solutions
• Ability to build and lead a strong team who fully contribute to success
• Experience leading transformation and innovation inside an organization
• Ability to communicate powerfully about your work to both small and large groups
• Fluent English is required; Kinyarwandan a plus

Benefits

Borderless Team of 2,500 staff worldwide that sees possibility, celebrates moments of abundance, shares new ideas, and strives to do a better thing every day.

Learning & Development – Access thousands of free online learning courses to take at your own pace and tailor to your professional goals.

Health, dental, and MedEvac Insurance – We strive to offer the best-in-class healthcare plans to our staff each year. We cover 100% of the cost for your health premium and 75% of the cost for coverage for your spouse/dependents.

Retirement – We contribute 6% of your salary regardless of your contribution amount, after one year of service.

Generous Leave Time – Between vacation days, personal leave days, and holidays, you have ample opportunity to take time off when you need it.

Who We Are

We are on a journey to build Alight, a new platform of amazing people and organizations providing lifesaving services and creating breakthrough solutions for and with the displaced. WeAreAlight.org

Alight is an Equal Opportunity Employer offering employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, sexual expression, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, citizenship, physical or mental disability, or protected veteran status. Alight complies with all applicable laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.