ChildFund International has an ambitious plan to scale its reach to 100 million children and family members annually to help children grow up healthy, educated, skilled and safe. The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Director will play a key role in realizing this bold goal through the implementation of ChildFund’s Global MEL system. This global MEL system includes our basic accountability functions, demographic data on children served by our programs, and outcome measures related to our programs. The Director will lead the MEL team and serve as a technical leader and subject matter expert in partnership with the Program Resources and Institutional Learning (PRIL) department, country office teams, and program staff globally. This includes overseeing the alignment of ChildFund’s current global outcomes to global standards and best practices.

The Director will also be responsible for supporting our resource mobilization efforts, including proposal development for a variety of donors. This includes the creation of Monitoring and Evaluation frameworks that help guide program design and developing program-level indicators to adequately measure outputs, outcomes and impact.

The Director works closely with the program technical and implementation team throughout the program life cycle to help establish targets, reevaluate contextual considerations and support technical teams to understand programming gaps and areas of opportunity.

Finally, the role requires working closely with the communications team and other cross-functional areas to ensure that they have access to the latest data to help support the organization’s positioning.

This is a full-time, open-ended, remote position open to internal and external candidates in the United States, with a preference for the Eastern time zone. To be eligible, candidates must have current work authorization and residence in the United States. The anticipated salary for this position is $120,000.

Required Experience and Education

Experience

• At least 10 years of progressive MEL experience across multiple countries or regional contexts with responsibilities for the establishment of MEL frameworks, organizational standards, and business development within the international development or humanitarian sector.
• A track record of leading the design of MEL plans for complex programs.
• Demonstrated experience leading the design of MEL plans for large-scale grants, such as those from USG, EU, UNICEF, foundations, and multilaterals.
• At least 3 years of experience supervising others and/or leading a team; experience leading a remote/geographically dispersed team is preferred.

Education

• Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BS) in data management, economics, anthropology, social sciences or related field required.
• Master’s degree preferred.

Primary Responsibilities

• Develop and refine data collection approaches and processes to ensure timely availability of global MEL results for planning, reflection, and related processes.
• Supervise a team of MEL practitioners and MEL supporting staff globally.
• Lead global M&E survey development (Global M&E Survey, baseline and endline assessments and KAPs).
• Provide oversight to other MEL colleagues implementing program evaluation processes, both internal and external. Support the development of terms of references and procurement for third-part evaluations and the methodology and implementation process for internal baseline, midterm and final evaluations where applicable.
• In collaboration with other technical advisors, develop data analysis plans and standard reports, and conduct data analyses to meet the needs of internal stakeholders.
• Develop guidance and coordinate the necessary support to MEL stakeholders to ensure data quality. Assist MEL colleagues with information management, data analysis, and knowledge sharing tasks.
• Develop and lead trainings and manage MEL Advisors to provide capacity strengthening in data management, data protection, mobile data collection tools and reporting dashboards.
• Create and manage data reports in PowerBI or other data visualization tools as applicable.
• Support Country Office staff with MEL data.
• Clean datasets managed by International Office MEL staff and champion programmatic data accuracy and completeness across the organization.
• Develop and oversee the development of MEL frameworks, plans, and tools for ChildFund’s strategic plan, working with internal stakeholders to maintain alignment with organizational standards, theories of change, and Result Frameworks.
• Develop systems for regularly monitoring the progress of pathway initiatives: identify standard indicators, primary and secondary data sources, data collection processes etc.
• Model scenarios to forecast the growth of ChildFund’s impact and reach.
• Work in collaboration with technical advisors and stakeholders across ChildFund to measure the reach and impact of its work.
• Strengthen and enforce compliance with existent data protection policies and procedures, in accordance with international standards in data privacy, accountability to affected populations and ChildFund’s safeguarding policies.
• Remain alert and responsive to any child safeguarding risks, acquire relevant knowledge and skills which will enable you to promote strong safeguarding practices, understand the child safeguarding policy and procedures, and conduct yourself in a manner consistent with the Child Safeguarding Policy.

Required Competencies

ChildFund’s Core Competencies

• Teamwork: the ability to work effectively and collaborate with others; values and respects individual differences.
• Communication: demonstrates empathy and tact when communicating with others and uses a storytelling approach when appropriate.
• Results orientation: gets things done; takes proactive steps to achieve organizational goals and quality standards.
• Decision making: uses good judgement, critical thinking, and non-traditional ways to evaluate problems and opportunities; reflects and innovates to improve decisions and outcomes.
• Resilience: thrives and grows in rapidly changing, demanding, and complex environments.
• Digital literacy: adopts and champions new technology to relevant contexts, stays aware of technological trends and embraces technological solutions to business challenges.

Other Required Competencies

• The ability to read, write, and speak fluently in English. Proficiency in Spanish, French, or Portuguese is preferred.
• Advanced skills with Power BI.
• Advanced analytical skills.
• Excellent knowledge of monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) methodologies, including results frameworks and indicators, MEL plans, quantitative and qualitative research, and data analysis.
• Proven ability to lead and influence in digitally-enabled, global work environment.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to provide virtual trainings and relay technical information to diverse audiences.
• Clear technical aptitude for new software programs, methodologies, or processes.
• Demonstrated design thinking orientation.
• Strong people leadership skills, including the ability to motivate a team wh
• Strong technical writing skills that include the ability to showcase data for well-designed, impact-focused programs.
• Proven ability to build and maintain strategic relationships internally and externally by creating a community of practice, building strong donor engagement and positioning ChildFund as a leader globally.

Other Criteria

• Ability to travel internationally up to 20% of the time.