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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

APO, Data Analytics & Insights - Africa

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, us, 98127


The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Africa Team works to enable the foundation’s high-reaching goals of scaling evidence-based interventions that target a range of diseases and socio-economic conditions which are endemic across Sub-Saharan Africa. The team drives its responsibility through direct country engagement to deploy interventions and delivery models, and by building the partner architecture to replicate successful interventions and models across multiple countries.

Our Africa Data and Digital Portfolio seeks to support and invest in country and regional institutions within the continent with the aim of capitalizing on the demographic dividend of energetic local talent and helping governments strengthen measurement systems and sequence reforms in pragmatic, coordinated and cost-effective ways that will both enhance the clarity and use of data for delivery and inform effective resource allocation in budget constrained environments. It aims to help governments systematically and responsibly harness, test and scale the potential of digital transformation and automation in improving efficiencies and accountability in transactional and operational systems and increasing citizen inclusion.

Our portfolio is driven by a set of core principles that include a strong belief in country ownership; the importance of helping governments have choice and make informed evidence based decisions; strengthening coordination and reducing fragmentation; sequential and long term approaches to change; investing in local ecosystems especially harnessing the power of youth and women; and the ability to experiment, test, innovate and build evidence to inform responsible scale up of interventions with a grounded and deep understanding of country contexts, realities and starting points. We are data driven and like to explore, analyze, understand and draw insights to inform our internal and external engagements. Part of our portfolio focuses on generating insights by using data, research and analysis to illuminate progress, challenges and inequities within and across the continent pertaining to key social challenges such as reducing maternal and child mortality or measuring health service coverage and the social determinants that affect equitable coverage. We are interested drawing insights and exploring how we can collectively address delivery challenges facing sectors such as health and understanding why certain populations continue to be excluded from key basic services.

Your Role

This role is a member of the Africa, Data and Digital portfolio within the broader Africa Team. The APO will support and lead our evolving work on data, analytics, and insights generation internally across the Africa team with a primary focus on public health but also focusing on paying attention to socio-economic insights that ultimately affect health and social outcomes.

We are looking for proactive talent with strong practical skills in data, analytics, research, evidence synthesis and knowledge translation to join the team to help advise and drive our work. You will complement your data, analytics and insights generation skills with a background or deep understanding of global health issues facing Africa. This role is well suited for early to mid-career professionals who are passionate about data and evidence and are keen to put their skills to use to address real world challenges while proactively rolling up their sleeves to grapple with sophisticated problems.

While this role primarily supports Data, Analytics and Insights internally, there will be some opportunities to engage with and work with external facing partners to move the needle on how data and evidence could be better used and analyzed to inform decision making.

This is an exciting role where you get to play multiple functions that include:

Data Seeker and Researcher – seeking out and interrogating different sources of data, research, and evidence to understand a particular problem.Data Preparer and Knowledge Manager – with the ability to prioritize different data sets and evidence for effective use and ensure effective knowledge management.Analyst and Insights Generator – helping to make sense of either sophisticated or limited data and draw understanding from findings.Knowledge Translator – who can simplify and translate data, research and evidence easily for use by others.Quality Assurer and Critical Reviewer – who can interrogate different approaches to measurement and programming and question the strength of evidence.Adviser and Ideas Generator – who can help generate new insights or point to missed lessons based on research.Continuous Learner and Listener – keen to immerse in sophisticated problems and understand contextual and situational realities that those excluded from key services are facing.Grant Maker - helping invest in country measurements systems.Connector and Collaborator – with the ability to identify, work with and crowd in a range of internal and external measurement opportunities.Service and Knowledge Brokering Function – providing internal services to key Africa team portfolios based on demand and requests.The position reports to the Deputy Director, Data and Digital, Africa Team and will be based in Seattle.

What You’ll Do

Proactively support, handle, prepare, track and analyze key data trends affecting selected countries and sub-nationally. You will be leading work related to countries abilities to progress against key health outcomes, country allocation of resources and financing, factors affecting gender inclusion and exclusion, and many others.Synthesis of incomplete information to inform program design and implementation, such as mining through health service consumption and identifying patterns and trends, and reviewing evidence to understand drivers of coverage gains or losses.Critically review, research, advise, engage and form points of views on different measurement methodologies that shape how countries measure and track progress of key metrics and how gaps in knowledge can be filled.Ensuring insights are regularly available and updated for easy use by relevant partners. This may include translating key data into accessible formats through databooks or visualizations, summarizing key research findings, and developing materials for internal decision making.Rapid data preparation, cleaning and systematization and active sourcing of data.Be a key knowledge resource to the team for emerging research questions, assisting with internal research requests, finding opportunities for learning, and assisting with knowledge management.Work with external partners on improving country level analytics tools. Triangulate findings with alternative data sources, brainstorm data visualizations with partners, and test analytics and models.Support Grant and Project Management as needed.Assist with monitoring, evaluating and lesson generation from key investments and synthesize findings, data and evidence around specific topics.Design and handle sophisticated qualitative and quantitative research projects, including vendor selection and project management.

Your Experience

Advanced degree and/or equivalent experience in a relevant field, such as statistics, data science, epidemiology or public health.Experience and/or deep understanding of public health challenges in Africa.Experience and passionate about understanding complex challenges through analyzing research, data and other inputs and using that understanding to develop insights for decision making.Expertise in data analytics, data visualization and modeling, research synthesis, market dynamics analysis, and insight generation.High degree of methodological and analytical proficiency, skills spanning evaluation design/methods, quantitative and qualitative research methods, data interpretation and visualization.Expertise in synthesizing sophisticated information, generating insights, and communicating compellingly.Demonstrated ability to address ambiguous questions through strategic problem-solving, rigor, insight generation and pro-activeness.Comfortable working with agility, efficiency, and tact in a dynamic environment, and able to adapt to a small team in start-up mode with ambiguity.Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work in a fast-paced environment. A strong ability to measure and mitigate risks, and make trade-offs.Excellent oral and written communication skills. Ability to conceptualize, analyze, and communicate data in a critical, accessible and useful manner both verbally and in writing.Proactive and Self Motivated.Excellent at prioritization and multi-tasking; able to work quickly, efficiently, and manage and move a portfolio of both short and longer-term outputs; attentive to detail, deadlines and processes.Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.Comfortable with travel for up to 15-20% of the role.

Additional Information

Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

The typical salary range for this role is $82,400 - $153,300 USD. The exact offer will be determined by a variety of factors such as the candidate’s individual skills, qualifications, and experience relative to the requirements of the role.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.

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