Manager - Consulting & Research at Pula

Job Description

• The Manager - consulting & research will report to the VP - Strategy & Research, and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.
• Independently lead consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies.
• Manage the whole consulting cycle from working with the commercial team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing a small team of analysts to deliver on the project.
• The nature of projects can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.
• Lead our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working with a small team to deliver on the contracted deliverables.  You will lead discrete data analysis and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
• Lead and inform strategic decisions among management, product, operations, and commercial teams with data analysis based on millions of data points collected across 12 African countries. Work with our product and data teams to identify new products that can be developed and monetize Pula’s data, combining quantitative and qualitative research to understand customer behavior and uptake of key features. For example: undertaking surveys to assess customer demand for new product features and working with the product and commercial  team to ensure commercial insights are monetized.

The right applicant would have the following skillset:

• 7+ years management consulting experience, proven track record with a top tier consulting firm is a strong plus
• Extremely strong quantitative and data analytics skills, as well as report writing and presentation skills
• Skills and experience in working with diverse set of stakeholders and building strong relationships with clients
• Strong team management skills, ability to work with multi cultural and multi disciplinary teams to deliver to our clients
• Bachelor’s degree with an outstanding academic record in the area of economics, mathematics, finance or similar relevant field
• You have either experience or interest in working in rural farming contexts and are passionate about helping smallholder farmers build resilience
• You have the ability to translate complex and challenging concepts into detailed action plans
• You are willing to speak up independently when there is a problem to be solved
• You have the ability to professionally and respectfully dissent, and logically debate challenges
• You are fully comfortable with GSuite applications (Google Sheets, Google Docs, G-Slides, etc.) and are able to adapt to new systems easily (e.g., ClickUp, Slack, Jira, Metabase, CommCare)
• You are comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment and can manage multiple projects in parallel
• You are comfortable and willing to travel (30-40% of the time) to customer sites across Africa, Asia and Latin America