USAID Momentum Integrated Health Resilience (MIHR) seeks to support countries in their journey to health resilience to overcome the impacts of fragility on the population’s health and contribute to countries’ movement along the development continuum toward reduced maternal, and child mortality and enhanced health resilience.
Description
The Director for Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) is responsible for leadership, coordination, and implementation of the MERL strategy to strengthen quality maternal, newborn, and child health, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health service delivery in fragile settings. Also critical to the success of this position is a sharp focus on advancing the learning agenda and contributing to knowledge at the global level about what it takes to strengthen MNCH/FP/RH service delivery and build resilience in fragile settings.The MERL Director is primarily responsible for the design, management, and implementation of systems to ensure quality monitoring and reporting of the project’s Activity MEL Plan for both core and field support activities, development, updating and oversight of the project’s learning agenda (including strategic inputs and documentation of CLA activities), review and oversight of all research undertaken by the project, and primary support to country teams for the quality, timeliness, completeness and reporting of all monitoring, evaluation and research data from their activities.S/he needs to have a strong capacity for defining a strategic vision for global programs and to demonstrate the ability to coordinate and communicate with MOMENTUM stakeholders, particularly other MOMENTUM awards including MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator (MKA). S/he will showcase experience with designing effective knowledge management and communication strategies to ensure uptake of evidence generated by projects. S/he will demonstrate strong capabilities in translating global learning for country action and informing global policy based on country-level learning.The MERL Director will promote strong working relationships between key stakeholders at the country and global levels, USAID technical teams, and partner organizations. S/he will foster team inclusiveness, collaboration, and communication to achieve project goals. The MERL Director will work with MEL and KM staff to ensure the project’s measurement is rigorous, innovative, and nimble, facilitates adaptive management, and emphasizes continuous learning and improvement.

The MERL Director has the following roles and responsibilities:

• Lead MIHR Result 3 “Adaptive Learning and use of evidence in MNCH/FP/RH programming through sustained host country technical leadership increase”.
• Provide inclusive and participatory thought and managerial leadership to the MERL function of MIHR;
• Design, update and implement the MEL plan at the field and global levels and tailor measurement plans based on country needs and stages of development;
• Provide technical oversight to ensure the systematic collection, analysis, synthesis, use, translation, and dissemination of data and learning to inform programmatic decision-making and the global evidence base for MNCH/FP/RH;
• Foster a culture of collaborative learning and adaptation (CLA) within the project, ensuring that MEL and research activities are timely, relevant, and used iteratively to improve program performance;
• Participate in global knowledge sharing and learning forums and working groups to ensure a feedback loop between country learning and global policy conversations;
• Ensure MEL activities are in line with USAID’s Evaluation Policy, Open Data Policy, , the Transformation Agenda and key technical guidance and frameworks; and incorporating health resilience measurement, fragility typology and complexity analysis within the broader MIHR MERL functions.
• Contribute to the design and implementation of capacity strengthening on a variety of MEL topics, including data for decision making and learning, at the country level;
• Establish and maintain highly collaborative working relationships with USAID Washington, USAID Missions, and relevant in-country stakeholders;
• Coordinate closely with MOMENTUM-Knowledge Accelerator (MKA) through collaborating and data sharing to ensure comprehensive synthesis and dissemination of evidence from across the MOMENTUM portfolio;
• Collaborate with digital health technologists to accelerate improvements in MNCH/FP/RH outcomes and streamline and improve data collection, management, and use;
• As a member of MIHR Leadership Team, Work closely with the MIHR Directors, Technical Leads and Advisors to coordinate the MEL agenda/strategy across both global and country programming;
• Supervise capacity building for local M&E staff, or host-country counterparts in M&E (likely through direct technical assistance);
• Supervise the MERL team that includes Country backstops, Digital health lead, Communications Lead, KM Lead and ME senior advisors; Ensure that necessary technical support is acquired from relevant JSI centers (e.g, Center for Digital Health, Center for Health Information, Monitoring and Evaluation).
• Promote sustainability of project activities with effective networking, linkages to other programs, capacity building of project staff, and institutional strengthening in support of; and
• Ensure documentation and dissemination of findings, impact, innovations, and lessons learned.
• Design and manage, as needed, MIHR evaluation activities and collaborate with external evaluation agencies as necessary.

• Master’s degree or higher in social science, public health, or clinical-related field with a concentration on monitoring and evaluation, statistics, research or related field, with at least ten (10) years’ experience designing, managing and/or implementing health monitoring systems, data quality assurance, database management, data analysis and use, and reporting, with at least five (5) years designing and managing/implementing evaluations, and analyzing qualitative and/or quantitative data internationally;
• Demonstrated experience in using research and monitoring information for decision making and program adaptations, especially in health programs;
• Demonstrated experience using digital technologies to support monitoring, evaluation and analytics;
• Demonstrated experience in effectively engaging with health care teams to select indicators for monitoring the project’s performance, outputs and health outcomes;
• Demonstrated experience building the capacity of host country counterparts in improving data quality, data management and analysis, and use of data for understanding program performance and solving problems;
• Lived and/or worked in, or have work experience in low or middle income or fragile countries;
• Experience on large complex global programs that are centrally funded and have a multi-country presence; experience working in consortium arrangements is preferred;
• Experience with critical cross-cutting themes like gender and capacity building;
• Fluent English oral and written communication skills. Fluency in an additional language is preferred but not required; and
• Willing to travel internationally up to 30% time.