Director, Global Operations
Location: Open to anywhere
Full-timePartially remote
Namati works with thousands of partners, practitioners, and paralegals across the globe to help communities access justice – from defense against land grabs, to combating environmental injustice, to regaining and preserving citizenship rights. Our team of passionate advocates is spread across six country offices and various remote locations around the world, representing different languages, customs, legal systems, and operating environments.
We strive to be deeply humble about the role we play in supporting communities – our work is about partnering with communities as they fight for their own legal rights and to facilitate learning between communities fighting similar battles all around the world.
We’re looking for a similarly-oriented Director of Global Operations to provide leadership in some of our most important global risk-management and capacity-building lines of internal work, with a focus on operations work that directly enables our on-the-ground presence. We’re looking for someone who has experience in grassroots work to truly understand our work and the struggles our organizers face. Our people are everything to us, and we take seriously our responsibility to keep them safe and facilitate their work.
We’re not looking for someone to implement a bunch of policies and procedures in a heavy-handed way. Rather, we want someone who will take the time to understand Namati’s unique contexts, truly listen to the needs of our people working on the ground, and co-create solutions to the tough situations they can face. We’re looking for someone who can source best practices and contextualize it to the reality of our context, grapple with trade offs, and build our internal capacity to be nimble and responsive.
The Director of Global Operations will report to the COO and have the following areas of responsibility:
Program Operations
- Provide strategic leadership while partnering deeply with program and cross-cutting teams to develop and implement operational policies and systems that are responsive to their needs and are compliant with local regulations
- Oversee operational capacity building of our program and cross-cutting teams (e.g., risk assessment, financial management, procurement); work with staff to develop training resources and opportunities based on the team’s specific contexts and needs
- In partnership with program teams, support our local implementing partners with resources and expertise to build their operational capacity
- Convene and manage monthly operations coordination calls with program teams
- Oversee the implementation of a robust organizational green policy in line with our values; collaborate with team members to examine all aspects of the organization’s operations
- Serve as a thought partner, to the COO on a wide variety of org-wide operations projects and needs
Safety, Security, and Risk Management
- Hold the vision and provide strategic leadership for protecting staff across all aspects of safety and security (including physical and digital)
- Serve as primary holder of safety policy and reporting projects, such as safeguarding policies and organizational risk registers, and liaise with funders to ensure we meet funding and reporting requirements
- Hold security, data protection, and data governance policies for the organization; support teams to ensure they have strong policies and procedures in place that are legally compliant and a reflection of ethical data standards
- Manage relationships with any outside experts and consultants
Administration
- Manage country registration and legal compliance in our operational contexts
- Hold procurement policies and procedures for the organization with oversight from global finance team; support country teams to ensure they have strong procurement policies and procedures that are responsive to program needs and in legal compliance with local regulations; work with appropriate staff to develop and facilitate ongoing procurement training
- Partner with country teams and the Manager, People and Culture to ensure we have strong HR and administrative policies and practices that are in line with our cultural values and in compliance with local regulations
- Work with the CFO to manage organizational insurance coverage
Management
- Supervise and partner with the Operations Officer
Examples of what you might have tackled last week
- Worked closely with the Citizenship team to address an emerging safety challenge faced by community paralegals
- Finalized a workshop training with the Director of the Community Land Program on procurement that she will facilitate with our implementing partner organizations
- Met with the operations team for Namati Kenya to review possible changes to their liability insurance coverage
- Met with the COO to provide advice and perspective on an internal operational question
- Reviewed a proposal from a new digital security consultant, and gave a final thumbs up on the scope of the engagement
- Sketched out a process to update existing partner agreements in India, in preparation to lead a revamp of our approach to these partnerships
About You
- Experience in Namati’s operational settings: You’ve lived and/or worked in a grassroots setting in Asia, Africa, or Latin America so you deeply understand and empathize with the needs and struggles of communities working for change.
- Experience in risk management: You’ve been charged, in some previous capacity, with keeping staff safe. You’ve done the research, planning, execution, and evaluation needed to run a trustworthy, effective, and responsive risk management strategy. You’ve had experience in justice movements and grassroots campaigns that helps you understand the risks.
- Service orientation: You listen more than you talk, seek to understand different teams in different cultural and programmatic contexts deeply and personally, and believe in a bottom-up approach to building policies and procedures that truly protect our teams and serve our mission.
- A creative, relentless problem-solver: It’s in your nature to work tirelessly on a problem — you don’t rest until you’ve identified a great solution. And although careful planning and execution define your work, when challenges arise you quickly reorient and identify the best new course of action. You’re well-regarded for your ability to make reasoned decisions, even in the face of limited or conflicting information.
- Collaborative and service-oriented: You greet everyone you encounter with a collaborative spirit, kindness, and empathy. You are known as a team-player who brings an all hands on deck mindset to all projects — you’re happy to contribute however you can to advance our mission.
- Growth-oriented: You’re always seeking to better yourself and your work, and you will push yourself to the peak of performance to help fulfill our mission. In service of that growth, you welcome and delight in feedback from supervisors, peers, and anyone else.
Nice to have:
- Experience facilitating practitioner learning: You’ve worked with adult learners, facilitated training, built co-learning opportunities across coalitions, developed popular education materials, or otherwise facilitated interactive peer exchange (ideally in the realm of environmental justice policy or organizing).
Location
We’re open to candidates anywhere but we have a preference for candidates based in Nairobi, Kenya. The successful candidate will be expected to occasionally work non-standard hours to accommodate the various time zones of our staff.
Compensation
We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate. We work to communicate transparently with candidates (including talking about compensation very early in the interview process) and will finalize pay and responsibilities based on the qualifications, experience, and country location of the person joining. If you have salary requirements, please share them in your cover letter.
We also offer excellent benefits: while the exact terms vary somewhat based on location, they always include health coverage, generous paid time off, retirement or old-age plan contributions, sick leave, and parental leave or compensation for the same. All staff also have access to funds for professional development opportunities.
To Apply
Please complete our online application. We’ve included two open-ended questions that are helpful to give us insight into your approach to and experience in operations. They are optional and we commit to reading the answers as they help us to understand you as a candidate better. Unanswered questions will not be held against you.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.