Director- Strategy & Research at Pula

Job Description

Director- Strategy & Research at Pula

• Pula is seeking an experienced Director to lead and execute strategy and research projects and support the President and Co- Fonder in building partnerships. She/he must have a love for probing into data, solving challenging problems, and structuring complex processes as well as a hunger for building partnerships across private sector, public sector, and non profits. She/he would love this role if they are motivated to help millions of farmers with climate change adaptation!
• She/he is expected to independently lead strategy and research engagements, that leverage our trove of existing relationships, products, data and leverage the potential of new technologies, including remote sensing and carbon credits, with the goal of delivering tangible new consulting revenue and long term new commercial opportunities. Tasks will range from liaising with new research and corporate and philanthropic clients, to working with management and tech teams to ensure smooth delivery of research and insights, to visiting the field to understand the on-the-ground perspective, to synthesizing learnings from the business and clients, to contributing to the creation of new value-additive products for farmers, agribusiness, insurers, governments, mobile operators and their agent networks.
• The Director – will report to the President and Co-founder – and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.

What you’ll be doing

• Independently engage in strategy and research engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Be involved in the whole consulting cycle from identifying new opportunities, working with the insurance team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing small teams put together for specific consulting assignments. The nature of projects can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.
• Create new content and insights as part of our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working as part of a lean team to deliver on the contracted deliverables.  You will be expected to deliver on discrete data analysis and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
• Along with the President you will be expected to identify new opportunities in new and existing markets, supporting market sizing for feasibility studies in new countries and ensuring that our commercial team has a steady supply of opportunities.
• You will be expected to develop content for Pula’s external communication and messaging through editorials, newsletters and webinars, publicizing the research work as well as wider work the company, coordinating with different departments in the business.

What you need to have to be successful

The hard skills:

• You have the analytical skills and the structured thinking to close action-oriented research and consulting projects as per committed timelines. At least 5-10 years of experience in management consulting.
• You can demonstrate to have originated and delivered on consulting work from development agencies and/or institutional donors for a value of at least $500,000 over the course of your career.
• You have experience working with Development Agencies at multiple levels and navigating institutional structures both in private foundations and development agencies.
• Advisory and strategy experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Financial Inclusion, Agriculture or related is a significant advantage.
• Networks, Experience and knowledge in the Climate Finance and Carbon Credit Industry will place you at an advantage.
• You are fully comfortable with Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.

The soft skills:

Relationships: 20%

• Can build trust-worthy relationships with internal teams and with external stakeholders rapidly. Can follow up on leads from the Consulting Director and also expand into new networks quickly and by themselves. Passionate about building and maintaining relationships.

Resilient & Analytical: 30% 

• Can navigate through lots of data sets and stakeholders to get the right information needed for consulting assignments as well as for closing deals and will not give up. Preferably a tenacious self-starter who enjoys being given ownership of initiatives. Recovers quickly from tough situations. Eager to build new partnerships, has a point to prove and looks to prove that point at Pula. Builds their profile and therefore reputation around Pula and the Pula products. They do not want to fail and therefore will do what it takes for Pula to succeed.

Coachable: 20%

• Is eager to learn, and grow in their skills and ability, and can adapt to the situation. Is resourceful to close any skills and knowledge gap. Openly receives and shares feedback. A consummate learner.

Gravitas yet Street Smart 30%

• Is charming and has a confident, comfortable presence. Can sit across from diplomats to Ministers of Agriculture and hold their own and pitch without assistance. Can understand and map the stakeholders in a new partnership, identify and test champions, structure the partnership, problem solve and find another way when a proposed partnership gets stuck.

Director- Strategy & Research at Pula