Senior Manager, Restoration Monitoring and Data Insights

IT & Telecom Information Management

This position will be hybrid requiring a few days per week in office. You can be based in our office in Kigali, Nairobi or Accra; WRI Africa Regional Office. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission as WRI is unable to sponsor any visa work sponsorship for this position.

About the Program:

WRI’s Global Restoration Initiative informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land, converting them to socially, economically and environmentally productive lands. WRI’s restoration work in Africa supports the goals of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, AFR100, where with other partners, we have identified more than 700 million hectares of cleared and degraded forest and agricultural lands suitable for restoration across Africa. Since 2023, WRI is supporting landscape-focused restoration in three anchor landscapes in Africa; the Ghana’s Cocoa Belt, the Kenya’s Greater Rift Valley and the Lake Kivu and Rusizi River basin in Burundi, DRC and Rwanda. Done well, landscape-scale restoration can revitalize African landscapes, while enhancing human well-being through food, energy and water systems which conserve, restore and sustain the continent’s rich natural heritage while generating evidence for scaling within and across landscapes. Restore Local is a WRI-led flagship project that contributes to realizing the goals of AFR100.

The four-year project will work to restore Africa’s vital landscapes by investing in locally led restoration at scale, providing local communities and businesses across the continent with the support they need to revitalize their landscapes. Restore Local will align its work with a four-part blueprint, creating training and mentorship opportunities, directly funding restoration champions, securing policies that reward farmers, and helping communities track their restoration progress with the right monitoring, reporting, and verification protocols. Collaborating with main partners and stakeholders, it will focus on delivering this blueprint in the three anchor landscapes and readying important infrastructure for replication and scaling across AFR100

Job Highlight:

Reporting to the Senior Manager of Africa Land Restoration and Senior Manager of Global Restoration Monitoring, you will help manage the operations of WRI’s restoration monitoring and verification activities in AFR100. You will identify critical data and insights needs for Restore Local to demonstrate progress to donors, partners and WRI leadership, leveraging the Inform team’s latest data science innovations. You will design how geoscience data and data through social science and environmental science can be used to in still trust and credibility in Restore Local's progress. You will shape restoration monitoring activities at landscape, country and continental scales, drawing links and learning lessons from existing monitoring and verification activities at TerraFund project scales. You will also contribute evaluation expertise and lead evaluation and impact assessments on various topics relevant to the Restore Local Project (i.e. restoration impact on food production, water supply, etc). As monitoring data is generated, you will work with the TerraMatch product and the Inform team to ensure that the needs of Restore Local user audiences are considered, which may require developing capacity development and knowledge products.

You will build, nurture and manage the African Inform team that provides technical support to landscapes, countries and to the broader AFR100 partnership. You will engage WRI’s Africa Restoration Executive Team (AFRET) on key decisions for the Inform team, support proposal development and staffing plans for monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities, publications reviews, training events, workshops, retreats and other learning events.

What will you do:

Strategy and Program Management (50%):

• Set the MRV vision for Restore Local team members to understand how existing geoscience data and research as well as socio-environmental science data and research contribute to highlighting progress in the Lake Kivu & Rusizi River Basin, the Greater Rift Valley, and the Ghana Cocoa Belt landscapes for donors, partners and investors. This includes integrating gender and social equality, locally-led adaptation, climate resilience into the indicator frameworks at project, landscape, country and continental scales
• Lead discussions within WRI and with partners to scope potential evaluations, impact assessments. Nurture a culture of impact evaluation within WRI’s inform team
• Lead the continuous improvement processes for TerraFund MRV, Landscape and Restore Local MRV to ensure learning across scales with a focus on improving accuracy and robustness of data, increasing the replicability and scalability of methods
• Represent WRI by communicating the Restore Local MRV program vision with partners, including Realize Impact and One Tree Planted, and continue to build a working relationship on restoration monitoring with them
• Develop and execute a plan for completing existing grant deliverables for WRI’s target countries in AFR100
• Manage delivery of restoration monitoring outputs, which includes aligning with GRI’s Objective and Key Results, setting priorities, and creating a culture of Asana use, achievement celebration, and accountability
• Liaise with AFRET and Senior Manager of Global Restoration Monitoring to plan and run bi-annual data-backed “pause, reflect and learn” moments that take stock of Restore Local’s progress and inform adaptive management measures

Research, Development and Innovation (30%):

• Define priorities for research & development related to restoration MRV, evaluation and impact assessment based on the needs of Restore Local at the project, landscape and regional scales
• Develop a plan with priorities and timelines to collaborate with internal and external experts to strengthen GRI’s narrative of how restoration creates outcomes for cross-cutting issues food, water security, biodiversity, climate, jobs, and livelihoods. Integrate diverse types of knowledge into research plans, including local, Indigenous, experiential, cultural
• Lead processes to identify Restore Local’s impact metrics and to design appropriate quantitative methods
• Lead or participate in field scoping and data gathering missions, including interviews, focus groups, site visits or other activities to identify evaluation elements or make recommendations for data collection methods
• Conduct or Oversee data analysis processes, following best practices for robust analysis and documentation to interpret findings
• Build and nurture partnerships with data providers, researchers and monitoring, evaluation, and learning experts in Africa
• Oversee field and/or sample-based data collection operations and recommend ways to improve operational efficiencies and to ensure replicability and scalability of TerraFund MRV and other landscape efforts
• Communicate research findings and lessons learned internally and externally through authoring WRI publications, blogs, reports, issue briefs, technical manuals on Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV)

Leadership and Fundraising (20%):

• Provide direction and clarify priorities for the multidisciplinary team that performs the daily operations for WRI’s monitoring activities in AFR100. This includes supervision and professional development of Monitoring and Data Insights team members, consultants, interns, and partners
• Draft donor and investor reports in a robust and timely manner
• Provide supervision and clarify priorities for Monitoring and Data Insights team member(s), consultants, interns, and partners

What will you need:

• Education: You have completed a master’s degree in data science, Econometrics, Social Science, or Environmental Science
• Experience: You have a minimum of 10 years of full-time work experience in a relevant field, with at least 3 years’ experience of managing a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural team
• You have experience in managing and providing technical backstopping for a multi-million dollar, cross-functional sustainable development programs in an NGO
• You have a strong understanding of theory of change development, strategy development, program management as well as monitoring, evaluation, and learning
• You have experience working with international teams, in U.S. and Africa.
• You have experience in forest and landscape restoration or forestry, with a focus on the realities and needs of local restoration groups
• You have fluency in Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint, with experience PowerBI, DevResults, M&E software systems, Python, Nvivo, or STATA.
• You have the ability to manage a complex workload remotely and meet deadlines
• Languages: You have written and verbal proficiency in English and French
• Requirements: Existing work authorization is required where this position. WRI is unable to authorize visa work authorization

Potential Salary: Salary is commensurate with experience and other compensable factors.

How to Apply: Please submit a resume with a required cover letter by the date of 8 May 2024. We are unable to consider your application without a cover letter.

You must apply through the WRI Careers portal to be considered.

What we offer:

• A competitive salary
• Access to the WRI global network with the opportunity to exchange with and learn from passionate colleagues working at the cutting edge of their fields across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the US
• The chance to have an impact and to develop your career within a mission driven organization with access to varied learning and training opportunities.
• A workplace that strives to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work
• The opportunity to join and get involved in different working groups and affinity groups to shape the future of WRI
• Commitment to hybrid working model with flexible working hours
• Generous leave days that increase with tenure

About Us:

Founded in 1982, World Resources Institute (WRI) is an independent, nonprofit global research organization that turns big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being. We are working to address seven critical challenges that the world must overcome this decade to secure a sustainable future for people and the planet: climate change, energy, food, forests, water, sustainable cities, and the ocean. WRI has a global staff of over 1,800 people with work spanning 60 countries. We have offices in Africa, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia and the United States, as well as a growing presence in other countries and regions.

The foundation of our work is delivering high-quality research, data, maps, and analysis to solve the world’s greatest environment and international development challenges and improve people’s lives. We work with leaders in government, business, and civil society to drive ambitious action and create change on the ground. Equally important, we bring together partners to develop breakthrough ideas and scale-up solutions for far-reaching, enduring impact.

Our mission and values:

WRI’s mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations.

Our values are shared ideals that bind us together: Integrity, Innovation,

Urgency, Independence and Respect.

Our culture:

WRI is committed to advancing gender and social equity for human well-being in our mission and applies this principle to our organizational and programmatic practices. We are committed to providing equal opportunities in employment; we embrace all diversity and encourage women, the LGBTQ+ community, persons with disabilities, Afro-descendants, and Indigenous people to apply. Recognizing our strong commitment to gender equality, WRI has also been awarded EDGE certification.

Our team in Human Resources carefully reviews all applications.

Apply now

Added 13 days ago - Updated 1 hour ago - Source: wri.org