Program Director, Regenerative Agriculture Program

About TechnoServe:

At TechnoServe, we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to build a better life. For over 50 years, we have given smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs the skills, connections, and confidence to lift themselves out of poverty. We leverage the power of markets and the private sector to create sustainable economic growth to benefit people and the planet. Our unique mix of business solutions, deep knowledge of local contexts, and data-driven insights is helping to fight poverty across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

TechnoServe staff are local–95% are from the countries in which they work. We put a high premium on collaboration and entrepreneurship. We hold ourselves and each other to the highest standards of integrity and transparency. And we focus on delivering lasting impact for our mission.

Program Overview:

TechnoServe has made a bold commitment to help create a people-, nature-, and climate-positive world. Our Regenerate 30 initiative launched at COP27 aims to achieve the following impact by 2030: 30 million people with increased resilience, 30 million tons of CO2e mitigated or sequestered, 30 million acres of land under sustainable management or improved conservation and $300 million in private sector investment. The initiative will drive over $1 billion in financial benefits for smallholder farmers and businesses. Innovating with corporate partners to transform their global supply chains across their entire sourcing footprint while they work towards achieving net zero commitments is critical to achieving our Regenerate 30 vision.

The donor has made a corporate commitment of protecting and regenerating 1.5 million hectares of land, forests and oceans by 2030 and has partnered with TechnoServe to deploy the Regenerative Agriculture Program, inspiring and supporting farmers and agribusinesses to engage in the journey towards regenerative production systems.

This global program, funded through 2027, is an opportunity to work with a leading company to demonstrate there is a future for a better, low carbon, biodiverse and profitable approach to farming. The program will work together with the donor’s suppliers across countries and a variety of food ingredients and will make meaningful contributions to TechnoServe’s Regenerate 30 impact goals. This will require us to work with the leading regenerative experts and practitioners in farming communities around the world supporting them to drive bottom-up change based on the local context. The program has a global scope which creates a unique opportunity to compare new regenerative farming practices and to share insights and lessons across contexts.

Job Summary:

TechnoServe seeks a Program Director to combine top-tier business advisory and/or management consulting experience with a commitment to our mission. The Program Director will lead our partnership with the donor to drive the transition towards regenerative farming models across countries and commodities in their sourcing footprint. They will oversee program implementation, ensuring achievement of impact goals and alignment with donor global priorities, suppliers and with the business case.

Primary Functions & Responsibilities:

• Leading overall implementation and management of the program, from inception to close-out
• Providing strategic guidance, leadership, management, and general technical oversight of the program, with an unwavering commitment to delivering results through partnership
• Managing implementation of the program including the design of the work plan and ensuring successful execution of program activities.
• Recruiting, leading, managing, and supervising implementation teams across countries, including implementing partners, technical organizations, and service providers
• Fostering collaboration, learning, and adaptive management to inform decision-making, communicate with stakeholders, and drive impact
• Serving as a liaison and driving shared vision and strategy among the donor, farmers and agribusinesses, and other key partners
• Maintaining strong relationships with the donor’s suppliers, providing strategic influencing to ensure collaboration and ownership
• Ensuring that program outcomes and deliverables are completed on time, within budget, and in compliance with donor and TechnoServe requirements
• Ensuring that all budgets and expenses are carried out according to both donor and TechnoServe’s policies and regulations
• Managing contracts, sub-awards, procurement, and payment processes in compliance with organizational policies and donor requirements.
• Identifying co-funding donor prospects and cultivating donor relationships

Basic Qualifications:

• Experience managing corporate and/or multi-stakeholder global partnerships with the ability to represent the program and work with multiple stakeholders to build consensus, coordinate efforts, and drive the program agenda at all levels
• Proven project management experience, innovative, proactive, with experience working in multicultural environments
• Strong quantitative analytics and demonstrated capacity to produce high-quality reports, models and proposals
• Bachelor's Degree in a related field (e.g., international relations, international economics, agricultural economics) with at least 10 years of relevant experience (e.g., international development programs, management consultancy, private sector agro-processing, finance) or a Master’s Degree with a minimum of seven years of relevant experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• At least three years of experience at a top tier management consulting firm is highly preferred.
• Understanding of sustainable and regenerative agriculture and food industry supply chains
• Experience managing, designing or developing the strategy for agricultural transformations, social impact initiatives, or other global development programs
• Experience supporting leading multinational companies to achieve social impact goals through market-based solutions
• Experience in contract management, procurement, and compliance with donor regulations and requirements.
• Experience working in complex and challenging environments
• Experience in establishing systems and overseeing program start-up under limited time and budget constraints, development of standard operating procedures (SOPs), and scaling up programs, teams or operations, and program close-out
• Experience managing and leading teams in hybrid/remote settings

Required Languages: Excellent oral, written, and interpersonal skills, including fluency in Spanish and English languages. Fluency in Portuguese is highly desirable.

Travel: International travel up to 30%.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Strong communications and interpersonal skills with evidence of ability to lead diverse teams and achieve results in a multi-cultural environment
• Excellent command of MS PowerPoint, Excel, and Word
• Ability to clearly communicate a high level strategy to internal and external stakeholders, while driving execution of a work plan and achievement of short-term milestones.
• Ability to work under tight deadlines while managing multiple tasks and activities
• Ability to use adaptive management principles to make strategic, data-driven decisions in the face of uncertainty and complexity

Supervisory Responsibilities – A team of two medium level staff at the central management level, and all implementation teams across countries as the portfolio expands.

This is a remote position based in the Latin America/Caribbean Region. Candidates must have work authorization in the country from which they are applying. Application materials should be submitted in English for further consideration.

We encourage all qualified individuals who share TechnoServe's vision of improving the lives of others through proven business solutions to apply.

With our commitment to diversity, we are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, HIV/AIDS status, protected veteran status, disability and all other protected classes.

We are also proud of our commitment to protecting staff, partners, and beneficiaries from abuse and exploitation and thoroughly vet all final candidates through rigorous background and reference checks.

If you have a disability that affects your ability to use our online system to apply for a position at TechnoServe please contact the Human Resources at recruitment@tns.org or call +1 202 785 4515.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities