Country Director, Nigeria at MSI Reproductive Choices

About the Role

• As Country Director, you will be responsible for delivering results for Nigerian women and their families, driving programmatic excellence, and implementing best practice a scale.  By providing high quality services where they are needed the most, your work will directly contribute to preventing unnecessary deaths and make a sustainable impact on the lives of thousands of people every year.
• The Country Director is a key leadership position responsible for the overall strategy, management (programmatic, financial, and administrative), and development of MSI’s national family planning and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) programmes. 
• As Country Director for MSION, you will lead a skilled and professional country team which delivers life-saving services through 6 clinical centres, 4 clinical pharma hub sites, 23 mobile outreach teams, a social marketing team promoting family planning commodities and through vital partnerships with 150 private sector franchise enterprises, with over 500 individual entrepreneurial providers (“Marie Stopes Ladies”) and with the staff in 2600 public sector health post sites.
• As a Country Director, you will lead your team to deliver on a 2030 strategy, by preparing each year appropriate business plans with annual budgets, marketing plans and work plans.
• You will be responsible with support from MSI to develop new business opportunities and to manage and fill a funding pipeline; you will lead on external relations with government, civil society and donor agencies; you will oversee financial, administrative and logistical resources; ensure adherence to MSI minimum standards and donor compliance and ensure good governance; you will be accountable for MSI’s duty of care to clients and staff; and you will assure quality operations in line with annual and long-term strategic goals and objectives.
• You will be a role model for leading and continuing to build a strong organisational culture embodying MSI’s values. As Country Director, you will manage for results, valuing and rewarding high performance, accountability, speed and efficiency and innovation, while keeping the client at the heart of everything you do.
• The Country Director is MSI’s senior representative in the country of assignment. You will work closely with governments, donors, and other key stakeholders to overcome barriers that prevent women and men from accessing safe, affordable, reliable family planning and other sexual and reproductive health services.

About You

• We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission and a focus on delivering measurable results.
• We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.
• You must be open-minded, curious, resilient, and solutions-oriented, and committed to promoting equality, and safeguarding the welfare of team members and clients alike.

To succeed in this role, you must have:

• Ideally Nigerian based senior management experience – will have successfully worked in a senior management and leadership role, ideally in Nigeria, with a wealth of experience in growing a business and leading a multi-disciplinary team.
• Ideally will also have had international management experience, working for a multinational or international agency in another country.
• Ideally will have both private sector/commercial experience (ideally in a health service provision environment) and experience of working with the international donor community and different grant making institutions.
• Proven general management experience in operationally demanding and challenging environments (to include management of large teams in an operational context with regional offices, staff recruitment, training and supervision of teams; security management; management of controls to prevent and address fraud and/or misdoing; safeguarding). 
• Proven experience of change management, including identifying required change, leading the change programme, and ensuring change is embedded and sustained.
• Designed and delivered strategic and annual business plans.
• Experience of income generation through donor funding and/or commercial activities and in delivering proven results by making informed decisions with the use of management information.
• Experience of building a brand into a brand of choice (including experience in FMCG or another private sector experience).
• Financial management experience, including internal controls and accountability: Ideally the individual will have managed a P&L; however, the successful candidate will have had experience managing and improving the bottom line.
• Demonstrable experience of generating, tracking and analysing management information and client data to inform management decision-making.
• Previous experience identifying and sharing best practice and encouraging innovation within dispersed teams.
• Proven experience of building lasting relationships with key external stakeholders, e.g. government or donor stakeholders to deliver tangible results for the organisation (for example, previous fundraising success).
• Experience of business development including developing and writing compelling tender proposals
• Board Management experience.

Skills:

• Extensive management of senior teams and people skills, able to authentically lead, motivate, and develop a team to enhance individual, team and organisational current and future performance
• Demonstrable ability to manage a multi-functional team, preferably in an operational and/or service delivery context, understanding the contribution and encouraging the effective participation of each department
• Understanding of commercial and financial management needs and principles – sales, marketing, pricing, margin, supply, forecasting and distribution - as required to lead MSION’s social marketing and clinic teams.
• Strong well-honed analytical skills, able to see priorities, key trends and variances in financial data, operational data, and clinical data; to present data and to apply knowledge gained to propose and track effective solutions
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, with ability to adapt and tailor messages depending on the audience
• Ability to position an organisation, building on its strengths, understanding its weaknesses, to capitalise on opportunities and build a good strategy; ability to work both at strategic and operational levels
• Ability to run multiple projects with competing deadlines, deliverables, and needs
• Traditional and non-traditional donor management skills
• Customer / client care management skills
• Ability to work with a Board, to manage good governance practices, to manage and reduce risk.

Personal Attributes:

• We seek exceptional individuals who are aligned to MSI’s mission and entrepreneurial mindset.
• You must be a strong communicator, self-motivated and solutions-seeking, committed to driving social change in an environment that measures sustainable results and impact at an individual and global level. 
• You must be able to work effectively with and across diverse teams and be comfortable with ambiguity. 
• High levels of self-awareness; they will actively seek out feedback on their performance (both results and behaviours) with a view to continuously learning and growing as a leader
• Can demonstrate high levels of accountability and resilience and communicate effectively both internally and externally.
• Energy and passion for purpose.
• Focus and drive and ability to stay on track.
• A commercial mindset, whereby they understand the levers for profitability for success within their marketplace
• Focus on the big picture, while understanding the detail
• Strong networking skills
• Flexible and adaptable
• Culturally aware
• Courageous, willing to take risks
• A compelling and influential communicator.

Salary
Country Programme Salary Range + Bonus + Benefits.