Innovative Financing Consultant

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WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies, and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. We are currently seeking to fill an Innovative Financing Consultancy position in the INKA division, based in Munich, Germany.

Brief description of WFP Innovation Accelerator, INKA:

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the United Nations frontline agency fighting hunger. WFP reaches more than 100 million people every day - delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with smallholder farmers, communities, and governments to improve nutrition and build resilience.

The WFP Innovation Accelerator was named by Fast Company as Most Innovative Non-Profit Organization 2021 for its work in identifying, nurturing, and scaling disruptive start-ups and innovations to end global hunger. Based in Munich, Germany, the Innovation Accelerator provides WFP employees and start-ups with funding, hands-on support, and access to WFP’s global operations. Through the Accelerator, WFP is leveraging unprecedented advances in digital innovation - such as mobile technology, artificial intelligence, and blockchain - and new business models to transform the way it serves vulnerable communities across the world. In 2021, Accelerator supported innovations that positively impacted the lives of 9 million people globally. Most recently, the Accelerator runs programs for external partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others

More information here: http://innovation.wfp.org and https://youtu.be/OnKkQlRdh2c.

General Information:

• Title of Post: Innovative Finance Consultant
• Unit: Innovation Accelerator, Innovation and Knowledge Management Division (INKA)
• Country: Germany
• Duty Station: Munich
• Initial contract duration: 5 months (extendable)
• Expected Start Date: 01.06.2022

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

The Consultant, reporting to the Head of Innovative Finance and Venture Launchpad, is expected to:

1) Foster the development and implementation of the Accelerator’s innovative financing models, with a particular focus on helping to build the Accelerator’s and WFP’s impact investing mechanisms to fund impact at scale:

• Conduct landscape mapping to further inform WFP impact investing activities and support relationship building with external investor partners to help with fundraising efforts for the WFP funding mechanisms as well as direct capital raising by the innovations.
• Contribute to the development and implementation of new impact investing mechanisms to attract additional funding towards investable and scalable innovations creating social impact at scale;
• Support the development and management of processes and tools for the impact investing mechanisms, including impact measurement and management, reporting and monitoring of investments facilitated by WFP;

• Develop a robust pipeline of investable and scalable innovations in the Accelerator and beyond, covering all aspects of deal origination from market research to investment proposal;

  2) Support innovations and other Accelerator teams with investment readiness, other innovative financing activities to accelerate their path to scale and to advance toward Zero Hunger and other Sustainable Development Goals:

• Provide investment readiness support and lead continuous refinement of a toolkit to be used across the Accelerator;

• Provide innovations with capital raising advice to secure the most suitable funding either through WFP impact investing mechanisms or external donors and investor partners;

• Share impact investing knowledge and best practices with the Accelerator and other WFP teams to promote and showcase the value of investment readiness activities.

  3) Support the Innovation Accelerator’s strategy deployment and operations:

• Design, test, prototype, validate and implement innovative financing models suitable to the WFP innovation projects and external startups addressing the impact, humanitarian and development topics;

• Engage with all necessary internal stakeholders on topics related to innovative financing models and support the building of strong external partnerships within the Innovative Financing ecosystem globally;
• Provide analysis and content preparation for presentations and management meetings on innovative financing and other priority topics;
• Support other core processes of the WFP Innovation Accelerator (e.g. innovation sourcing; innovation bootcamps; sprints programme; scale-up enablement; innovation services; communications and knowledge management) as required, and, from time to time, support the Head of the Innovation Accelerator and the Director of Innovation and Knowledge Management with any other activities as required.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business Administration or equivalent. Master’s degree a plus.

Experience: At least 3 years of progressively responsible international experience in a start-up leadership role, start-up accelerator, innovations in private businesses or innovations in the humanitarian or international development sector. Experience in innovative financing and in microfinance is a plus.

Languages: Fluency in oral and written English is mandatory. Intermediate knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish) or Portuguese (one of WFP’s working languages) is a plus.

REQUIRED SOFT SKILLS | WFP COMPETENCIES

• Ability to conduct detailed research on innovative businesses, understand their business models and impact potential, and create financial and non-financial forecasts;
• Understanding of the impact investing sector, ability to identify key trends, conduct market scoping exercise and identify potential external investor partners;
• Understanding of investment processes and ability to advise innovations and Accelerator teams on key aspects of investment readiness and capital raising activities;
• Strong conceptual thinking and analytical skills to develop new innovative financing strategies and models;

• Passion for innovations disrupting hunger, preferably with working knowledge of investing in food system transformation, climate change adaptation and socio-economic resilience (incl. agtech, foodtech, market access platforms etc.);

• Experience working cross-functionally and getting things done in an agile and hands-on way;

• Able to interact with a broad range of stakeholders and external audience with maturity and tact;
• Excellent communication/presentation skills, with the ability to write strategy documents, to develop business plans, to pitch investment proposals, and to write and deliver presentations.
• Collaborative spirit, able to partner with a wide range of people at all levels and across different cultures and to act with credibility and diplomacy;
• Self-motivated and able to work with a high degree of autonomy;
• Sets a high-level of ambition for own and the innovative finance team’s work to achieve impact for the vulnerable people we serve;
• Fully committed and motivated to achieve the aims of the UN World Food Programme

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

WFP offers a competitive compensation package which will be determined by the contract type and selected candidate’s qualifications and experience.

Please visit the following website for detailed information on working with WFP: http://www.wfp.org

Click on: “Our work” and “Countries” to learn more about WFP’s operations.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

Closing date: 22 May 2022

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All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.