Jobs at Mastercard Foundation

The Director, Programming Excellence provides strategic leadership to embed consistent, high-quality, inclusive, and adaptive program delivery practices across the Foundation. This role drives the design and implementation of standards, processes, and systems that enable operational excellence in how we work with partners—from selection and onboarding, through implementation and learning, to offboarding. By aligning tools, policies, capacity-building efforts, and partner feedback mechanisms, the Director ensures the Foundation’s programming reflects our values of respect, co-creation, accountability, and continuous improvement.

This role acts as the institutional custodian of the partner journey and the architect of a holistic programming framework that supports Country and Technical teams in delivering transformative outcomes for young people. Through deep collaboration with other enabling functions—including Strategy & Learning, Research, Foundation Academy, and Knowledge Management—the Director will ensure that programming excellence is not only a technical imperative, but also a cultural and relational one.

WAYS YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE

Programming Standards, Processes, and Quality Assurance

• Develop, refine, and maintain the Foundation’s programming processes, standards, toolkits, and templates to ensure consistency, coherence, and alignment across platforms and countries.
• Lead quality assurance efforts across the partner lifecycle, from due diligence through implementation to exit, ensuring alignment with Foundation values and intended outcomes.
• Govern and manage revisions to programming policies, guidelines, and processes in collaboration with Program Operations and other Functional Excellence teams.

Partner Journey Management

• Oversee the end-to-end partner journey, ensuring that partner experiences—onboarding, accompaniment, collaboration, and offboarding—are structured, meaningful, and values-aligned.
• Develop partner journey indicators in collaboration with M&E and Program teams to assess and improve the partner experience.

Partner Engagement & Accompaniment

• Lead the design and execution of structured partner onboarding and offboarding experiences, ensuring a seamless and values-based transition across stages.
• Design partner accompaniment strategies and practices that reflect the Foundation’s enabling posture and principles of co-creation.

Capacity Building & Learning

• Identify capacity gaps and lead the design and rollout of training, workshops, and learning sessions to strengthen program management and delivery capabilities.
• Coordinate with Foundation Academy, KM, and Research teams to ensure knowledge is codified, shared, and translated into action within Country and Technical teams.

Partner Collaboration & Feedback Loops

• Lead mechanisms to capture and act on partner feedback, including surveys, reflection sessions, and other partner-led inputs.
• Facilitate communities of practice, peer learning exchanges, and collaborative spaces to foster mutual learning between partners and internal teams.

Operational Alignment and Change Leadership

• Ensure Programming Excellence principles are embedded into the Foundation’s operating model and Ways of Working (WoW) frameworks.
• Serve as a change leader, promoting adaptive delivery, continuous improvement, and accountability to results.
• Partner with Integrated Teams to ensure standardization, alignment, and responsiveness to field realities.

WHO YOU ARE

• Master’s degree in Organizational Development, Education, Public Administration, Social Innovation, or a related field.
• Professional certifications in Facilitation, Project Quality Management, Learning Design, or Operational Excellence are an asset.
•  12 - 15 years of work experience in Planning, Strategy and/or Project/Program management in both the private and public sectors.
• Proven track record in strategic planning, portfolio management, and large-scale program implementation across multiple countries or functions.
• Deep experience managing operational systems, processes, and tools to drive program performance and governance.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders, manage cross-functional stakeholders, and lead strategic initiatives with high degrees of complexity and ambiguity.
• Experience in designing and facilitating high-impact learning, planning, or review sessions involving diverse stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of inclusive development principles and experience integrating gender, youth, or marginalized group lenses into operational frameworks.
• Systems Thinking: Ability to design scalable, integrated solutions that promote coherence and continuous improvement.
• Inclusive Leadership: Builds trust, invites multiple perspectives, and engages partners as co-creators.
• Execution Excellence: Balances high standards with pragmatism; skilled at managing complexity.
• Collaborative Influence: Works effectively across teams and functions; facilitates alignment and shared ownership.
• Learning Orientation: Embraces experimentation, reflection, and agility in service of impact.
• High emotional intelligence, professional maturity, and cultural sensitivity.
• Deep commitment to the Foundation’s mission, values, and youth-centered approach.
• A highly analytical problem-solver and critical thinker who can define root cause, evaluate alternatives and find solutions effectively.
• Service mindset for responsiveness to requests and striving towards becoming trusted business partners to drive common Foundation goals.  
• A team player with strong self-direction balanced with a collaborative and creative approach, with the ability to work under minimal supervision.
• Agile, adaptable, and able to execute a range of job duties and changing priorities. 
• Possess excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills with the ability to articulate information to a variety of constituents across cultures and support a culture of change.
• Possess professional maturity, sensitivity with different cultures, and impeccable integrity.  
• Alignment and commitment to Foundation mission and values. 
• Aptitude for and keen interest in learning new information design and communication technology. 

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This role provides leadership, guidance, and technical support to all program delivery platforms (Country Programs, Pan African, Education & Transitions, Strategic Partnerships & Innovation, Special Programs & Health etc.) on program planning. S/He will be primarily responsible for leading program and portfolio planning that translates strategic agenda into annual/thematic plans and operational delivery; building and ensuring the implementation of the Foundation’s investment tracking systems and monitoring framework and coordinating tasks and processes for monitoring progress on key agreed indicators.

WAYS YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE

• Design planning framework for programs, including forecasts, budget planning, and program-wide annual calendar of priorities and activities. 
• Monitor timelines for the annual program planning cycle. 
• Track and collate program-wide portfolio implementation plans, progress, and status at all levels in close consultation with Country, Pan African, and HCD program operations heads. 
• Facilitate planning and coordination sessions within Programs.
• Lead the review and revision as necessary of the program planning framework.
• Embed a common planning framework across programs through training and other cross-program team engagement initiatives.
• Adapt planning and budgeting framework to program evolution.
• Coordinates the processes of determining the best strategic approach in a country based on the Foundation’s mission, niche and comparative advantage, and alignment to the country’s national priorities and aspirations of young women and men. Specifically, to develop strategic plans.
• Codify lessons learned from diagnostics, ecosystem mappings, foresight studies, and macro analysis to inform strategic plans.
• Lead and manage the program strategy development processes, including root cause analyses, target setting, and illustrating the development hypotheses.
• Coordinates the program and portfolio planning that incorporates an integrated end-to-end programming process, including approaches/ mechanisms for partnering.
• Contributes to project design processes such as developing/evolving project boundaries, theories of change, and adaptable plan(s) for implementation.
• Design and execute an integrated annual operational planning calendar and activities for Programs, including PST reviews, ExCo reviews, Proposal Approvals etc.
• Come up with planning tools, resources and drive planning capability building across the Programs’ teams.
• Develops effective learning and capacity-building mechanisms on monitoring and partner insights, continuously identifying good practices inside and outside the Foundation to inform learning and provide oversight of peer support to the Foundation’s Partners in the Country.
• In collaboration with Impact Capability Development and other relevant Functions, carries out capacity assessments based on country needs, including supporting the Program team to build MEL capabilities, multiply the learning, and provide peer-to-peer support.

WHO YOU ARE

• Master’s degree in development studies/ social sciences/ economics/statistics or its equivalent.
• Post-graduate degree and/or equivalent experience and training. A knowledge of research methods, and in particular, research approaches and skills related to gathering data and insights among Indigenous communities, youth, and other vulnerable groups, using appropriate cultural lenses and perspectives.
• Ten (10) plus years of experience working with the private and non-profit sectors, particularly in a role relating to leading/coordinating planning, strategy, M&E, and reporting systems.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and manage strategic and operational plans to manage and track the implementation of Roadmaps and partnerships – delivery of outcomes and deliverables, timelines, and responsibilities.
• Experience in working closely with stakeholders in developing countries (such as government ministries and NGOs) to design and implement results-based management systems; this should be done in such a way that the M&E systems become useful for local stakeholders and get used by them.
• Experience in working with international stakeholders (e.g., donors) to design/implement results-based management systems for complex programs, including programs that have a wide scope of emergent interventions and a focus on adaptation and learning.
• Quality assessments of administrative, qualitative, and quantitative data mixed methods.
• Experience with beneficiary feedback loops and participatory methods.
• Experience at senior leadership and management, preferably leading a country.
• Experience living and/or working in a local country/community.
• Experience navigating research protocols, review processes and management of big data with government and academic institutions.
• Solid experience in strategic, portfolio, and implementation work planning.
• Deep familiarity with strategies for collecting, collating, and analyzing data for the purpose of measuring and reporting on outcomes and impacts. Deep knowledge of monitoring systems, local research, and evaluation methods.
• Strong language, culture, and identity/affiliation with national people.
• Membership in national networks and authorities as applicable.
• Skills and competency to develop Measurable Outcomes and Impacts, as well as methods and tools for measuring the same within government and non-governmental institutions.
• Understanding of systems thinking and strong ability to develop and test theories of change and associated practice tools as they may be relevant and appropriate for Indigenous communities.
• A dynamic thinker, you bring effective experience in stakeholder engagement and policy influencing. This can include experience working in community-based organizations, governance and related councils/commissions, regional and national government, and the private sector.
• Records and filing skills for maintaining information resources and publications.