Senior Program Advisor: Market System Development (MSD) at Mercy Corps

General Position Summary

The role supports three of the programs in the ‘MSD4E Portfolio’, including on-going programming in Ethiopia, new programming in Liberia, and potential programming in Zimbabwe. The position will provide senior leadership of the program’s technical components and ensure the synthesis of technical approaches across the three program countries: Liberia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe. The position has the explicit mandate to ensure that programs are adopting best practice MSD methodologies in line with Mercy Corps’ global MSD4E strategy and supports key milestones during the program cycle for quality. S/he provides a supportive role to project leaders to help maintain technical quality and builds capacity of the program team to deliver the intended results. S/he also ensures that lessons from these programs are documented and inform the global strategy.

Essential Job Responsibilities

Program Quality Support to Project Start-up and Implementation

• Provide close technical assistance to target projects to ensure that they apply best practice MSD methodologies as applied to employment programming
• Assume responsibility for translating program learning into tangible adjustments to intervention strategiesReview core documentation (work plans, reports, concept notes) of target programs to ensure quality and support improvement
• Serve as technical quality assurance focal point, ensuring quality standards, and working with leadership to improve plans and deliverables when they fall short.
• Provided leadership and strategic vision to technical components of the three programs including workplan development, market and labor assessments, partnership selection and management, and overall sector strategy.

 Training & Coaching

• Provide training for incoming staff on MSD and MSD4E approaches
• Identify ongoing opportunities for staff upskilling and work with project leaders to implement professional development initiatives
• Coach, advise, and support project staff and intervention managers, in collaboration with project leaders.
• In close partnership with project leaders, create a work atmosphere conducive to professional growth and development of excellent MSDE personnel at all levels.

Research

• Support the development of learning agenda for the target projects
• Lead write up of briefs, blogs, and other content for both internal and external audiences
• Support research projects led by the Research and Learning team on target programs.
• Oversee integration of best practices, standardization, dissemination of lessons learned to internal and external stakeholders.
• Encourage systematic opportunities to use data for learning and improvement, and to focus on learning lessons throughout the life of the program.

Contribution to Global MSD4E Strategy

• Ensure that lessons, experiences, and tools from target projects are fed back into Mercy Corps’ Global Strategy and tools

Supervisory Responsibility

N/A

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Africa Technical Director

Works Directly With: Global Senior Advisor for Employment (MSD4E Lead), Program Managers/Team Leaders of target programs

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

 Knowledge And Experience

• 5+ years of experience of increasingly proficient management and/or technical support in MSD programming, with at least one job experience in a globally well-reputed MSD project.
• Proven experience assessing markets and working with private sector partners
• Experience working across different geographies, including Africa, and more specifically in fragile environments.
• Strong ability to understand and manage multiple stakeholders and complex relationships at multiple levels of the organization.
• Willingness and ability to travel frequently to Mercy Corps project sites, including traveling to insecure environments, is required.
• A proven proactive approach to work and self-driven leadership.
• Fluency in English is required, with strong written and oral communication skills.