Senior Program Officer, Country Immunization Program - Measles and Campaign Effectiveness at Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation

Your Role

• The Senior Program Officer (SPO), Country Immunization Program - Measles and Campaign Effectiveness will manage a portfolio of grants, relationships and analytics focused on identify, reaching, and monitoring programs to reach unvaccinated children in Nigeria.
• Most of your time will be spent operationalizing our team strategy; designing, making, and managing grants; and working with national and states government and implementing partners. You will use strong diplomacy and communication skills to forge trusting relationships with internal and external partners.
• The postholder will be based at the foundation’s Nigeria Country Office (NCO) in Abuja, and will report to the Deputy Director, Health, and Nutrition.

What You'll Do

The role focuses on engaging government, donors, and multiple implementing partners, developing insights, piloting new delivery approaches, and supporting government at national and state level to implement strong immunization program:

• Shape and manage a newer portfolio of grants and contracts to support government of Nigeria and states’ immunization programs directly or through partners to strengthen routine immunization systems, with a focus on reaching unvaccinated children.
• Together with other SPOs/POs, work to operationalize the foundation and NCO immunization strategy, with a focus on alignment with other internal immunization sub-teams toward achieving the foundation and Nigeria Country immunization goals.
• Manage portfolio of grants and contracts focused on high impact focus areas (prioritized by the foundation), immunization systems strengthening, new vaccine introductions, new tools and technology, and health worker learning and performance management.
• Lead the Nigeria Country immunization work on measles – routine Immunization, campaigns and broader campaign effectiveness workstream.
• Work with foundation colleagues and grantees to research and do analysis, supporting strategy development, and supporting (e.g., prospecting and identifying) investment opportunities.
• Work with the Nigeria Country team and partners to develop and implement measles/rubella (MR) strategic planning, campaign, and other post coverage campaign interventions – including other vaccines preventable diseases outbreak responses.
• Work with the national and state M&E technical Working Groups to support the use of high-quality data for design and implementation of high impact, context specific interventions.
• Work with foundation internal colleagues and government partners to improve the quality and implementation of measles campaign – including but not limited to development of new strategies for measles campaign and potential introduction of new tolls and technology to support this.
• Collaborate with grantees and other partners to improve impact of work, ensure grants are meeting strategy goals, and learning is widely shared.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with collaborators from governments, NGOs and global partner organizations such as Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF. Proactively identify and pursue opportunities for co-managed and/or co-financed collaborations to achieve the foundation and Country immunization goals.
• Represent the foundation to key program-related external constituencies, as appropriate, on technical working groups related to area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
• Help operationalize and ensure implementation of the immunization team’s overall measurement, learning and evaluation approach, with a focus on achieving targeted goals, dissemination, and scale.
• Embed diversity, equity, and inclusion principles into the implementation of day-to-day work, interactions with colleagues and investments.
• Support any additional work stream assigned to you by the Deputy Director, Health, and Nutrition, including if needed help backstop other parts of the immunization and team portfolio.

Your Experience

• Masters in a health-related field (e.g. public health, epidemiology, health care management, medicine).
• Minimum eight years of experience in international public health, with a focus on immunization, in senior level roles.
• Work experience in low and middle-income countries contexts would be an advantage.
• Experience working in Nigeria is essential.
• Knowledge of routine immunization systems - preferred experience at national and international level in areas such as immunization system strengthening, planning and implementation of immunization (and other health services) campaigns, data systems and management, worker learning and performance management, service delivery integration, and reaching unvaccinated populations.
• Experience of developing evidence-based strategic or operational plans as well as shaping and managing sustainable and scalable investments.
• Collaborative coalition builder with a track record of creating effective partnerships with a range of global health partners (country, regional and/or global level).
• Strong quantitative skills with expertise collecting and using data to drive strategy and program decisions.
• Serving as a technical resource internally and externally on impact evaluations, operational research, and modeling.
• Strong analytical, writing and verbal skills for communicating with a broad and diverse audience, including experience of communicating and translating technical analyses and results clearly and simply for a variety of purposes including programmatic decision making and strategy.
• Objectively and rigorously assessing work with a focus on continuous learning. Ability to adapt quickly based on new information, an appetite to test new ideas, and willingness to accept failure as an important step in learning.
• Ability to identify evidence-based practices and support scaling and replication of practices to other contexts.
• Demonstrated strong personal initiative and ability to be self-directed in ambiguous and dynamic situations, with a creative problem-solving approach.
• Handles complexity and ambiguity effectively: proven ability to be flexible, efficient, and tactful in a fast-paced environment.

Other Attributes

• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people and a deep commitment to development issues and high standards of personal integrity.
• Ability to travel up to 25% domestically and internationally.