About the Role

• Reporting to the Country Director, this highly influential role will have their eyes on the big picture and future trends, shaping Practical Action’s strategy in Kenya and setting the Change Ambitions that define the impact the group will make.
• The Head of Impact & Influence will champion Practical Action’s Framework for Change; ensuring that we achieve the most positive impact on the lives of women and men and that we capture the learning and evidence.
• The role leads in strategy development, provides strategic leadership of the country’s MEL approach and how we capture our impact and learning, manages gender as a cross-cutting function, and coordinates our communications both internally and externally.

Duties & Responsibilities

Leadership and Strategic Alignment

• Lead, manage, and motivate the impact and influence team ensuring that they have clear work objectives and individual/teamwork plans and receive meaningful feedback on their performance.
• Work closely with the Business Development and Programs teams to support a stream of high-quality new funding proposals.
• Together with the Head of Programs, lead the development process of the country office strategic business plan (SBP), ensuring that change objectives are developed to achieve change in the lives of the people that we work with.
• Lead in the routine quarterly and annual reporting of the SBP, working with the programs’ team on evaluating impact against change objectives.
• Ensure a detailed understanding of organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) to enable effective tracking of progress on a quarterly and annual basis.
• Ensure that Practical Action’s work draws on learning and innovation and is shared effectively with the wider Practical Action organization.
• Ensure that Practical Action cross-cutting themes on gender and climate technology are embedded in change objectives and measured as part of the organization’s impact.
• Strengthening Profile, Generating Funding, and Managing Relationships
• Ensure that the Impact and Influence team contributes to the proposal development process by leading design workshops that build proposals on overall change objectives and Practical Action’s approach to understanding system change is embedded in the design.
• Ensure that MEL and Impact functions and processes are budgeted for in proposals and new funding.
• Ensure that impact and lessons from program delivery feed into organizational profile strengthening through stories of change and impact reporting.
• Participate in learning forums and opportunities to showcase the organization’s impact.

Delivering Quality

• Responsible for the provision of effective support to ensure systems thinking, gender and inclusion and MEL practices are at the heart of all our work. Ensure that progress is tracked against project deliverables, working with the project team on MEL plans for each project.
• Lead the development of a range of methodologies and indicators to enable a rigorous assessment of our progress against plans. Ensure that data is collected on the reach of our work and is measured, including beneficiary numbers as a standard and global measure of our outputs.
• Ensure that plans adequately define the impact they will make and that they have adequate measures in place to monitor progress, and capture evidence and impact.
• Provide senior management with a periodic high-level assessment of our impact and our learning, and recommendations on ways to maximize our effectiveness.
• Work with the Communications Team to share our impact and our learning internally and externally in a compelling way.
• Oversee the development of the infrastructure and culture to capture knowledge, evidence, impact, and learning; contributing to capacity-building efforts.
• Working closely with the Heads of Change Ambitions (in the UK) to guide the work of defining impact and participation in the Global Change Hubs, and Gender Group to ensure that learning, evidence, and influencing efforts contribute to the Change Ambition work across the group.
• Ensure that the evaluation of our work includes critical aspects of how we work, such as gender integration, partnerships (including learning from community partners), and aspects of value for money.
• Lead and support effective processes for reflection, learning, documentation, and dissemination. Ensure meaningful participation of field staff, partners, and beneficiaries in the reviews.
• Advise and assist program staff in undertaking quality baseline studies, external midterm and final evaluations of their projects, and follow up to ensure that recommendations are acted upon and where appropriate, made available to other members of the group.
• Ensure that MEL staff are working with project delivery teams to design and monitor MEL plans.
• Through regular monitoring, work with finance and award management to understand and capture delivery risks, and share with SMT and the wider organization.
• Build capacity of delivery teams and others in the organization on defining and measuring change, consistently working with global teams on implementing the overall MEL Framework.
• Take the lead in the preparation of quarterly reports including quarterly risk register reviews

Qualifications

Experience & Knowledge

• Proven experience in the design and delivery of monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment methodologies in an international development setting.

Essential

• Masters in Monitoring & Evaluation/international development or any other relevant field.
• At least seven years of relevant experience, three of which must have been at the middle management level preferably in an international NGO setting.
• Substantial MEL training and capacity-building experience preferably with field and remote-based staff.
• Successful track record of implementing effective MEL systems, including experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection and management.
• Proven analytical and problem-solving skills to understand the range and content of the organization’s thematic work and provide practical solutions to operational challenges.
• A flexible and initiative-taking, proactive, inspiring attitude with the ability to manage and prioritize an unpredictable workload, including the ability and willingness to change work practices and hours in the event of a larger demand.
• A strong understanding of and commitment to gender and diversity.
• Willingness to travel within the country and internationally.
• Fluency in English, with strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Proven project/program management experience, and research experience, including hands-on experience in program assessments, problem analysis and project and program design, project cycle management, grants management, and donor liaison.

Desirable

• Ability to collect, collate, and assimilate information from a variety of sources and to present it to others clearly and simply.
• Competence in managing appropriate database systems for monitoring and evaluation.
• A team player with excellent written and verbal communication skills – able to listen to others, identify and share important/key information, and influence others in the uptake of new or adapted approaches.
• Understanding and experience engaging in Market System Development (MSD) programming with a focus on rural areas including dry lands.