Program Officer - Water, Sanitation, And Hygiene

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Gates Foundation’s global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WSH) vision is to enable widespread use of safely managed, sustainable sanitation services, contributing to positive health, economic, and gender equality outcomes for the world’s poorest. Unsafe sanitation is a substantial problem that is becoming more urgent as our global population increases and trends like water scarcity and urbanization intensify. About 3.6 billion people—almost half the world’s population—either practice open defecation or use unsafe sanitation facilities and services.
The Gates Foundation WSH Team collaborates with government leaders, the private and civil sectors, and technologists to advance policies, service delivery models, and promising new toilet and waste treatment technologies with the greatest potential to improve sanitation conditions for underserved communities. We focus our grantmaking in three complementary areas: advocacy to drive political will for improved sanitation and support for appropriate policies and institutional frameworks; redefining how cities can provide sanitation as a reliable, inclusive and sustainable public service – led by our City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) initiative, and developing and commercializing ground-breaking sanitation technologies, led by our Transformative Technology & Commercialization (TTC) initiative.
The CWIS initiative focuses on furthering the CWIS public service approach to achieve equitable, sustainable and safely managed sanitation by strengthening the design and implementation of core public systems functions of responsibility, accountability and resource planning and management. The initiative includes a portfolio of investments and relationships to demonstrate, enable and strengthen CWIS approaches through proof points, examples, tools data systems and normative guidance; influence development and financing partners through institutionalization of CWIS approaches in their support to country governments; develop markets for innovative sanitation technology; strengthen public data systems for decision-making; and replicate and scale CWIS systems change approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia through support to implementation of CWIS programs and policies in selected countries and scaling through regional platforms.

Your Role

The Program Officer will lead the CWIS work related to developing markets for innovative sanitation technologies. As well as provide strategy officer support to the WSH team, primarily the CWIS and TTC initiatives!

The successful candidate will be a strong strategic problem solver with exceptional collaboration skills to work with multiple program officers and partners at the intersection of critical areas within the WSH strategy.

The PO reports to the Deputy Director, Citywide Inclusive Sanitation for the WSH team with a dotted line to the WSH Deputy Director of Strategy, Planning and Management and will be based in the foundation’s Seattle headquarters.

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate with intermediary partners to support development of sanitation systems that will establish a foundation for progressive technology adoption.
• Develop a portfolio of investments in selected geographies, with the aim of advancing the readiness of the ground-breaking sanitation technology industry and key market segments.
• Foster linkages, cross-learning opportunities and peer exchange across regions and countries in order to propagate understanding of ground-breaking sanitation technologies within an inclusive urban sanitation service delivery context.
• Make and manage a broad and inter-connected portfolio of grants, investments and relationships.
• Build, develop and nurture relationships with key regional platforms, public sector officials, private service operators, technical and financial partners, and community and civil society organizations in order to advance the awareness of and demand for the Reinvented Toilet.
• Design new investments and forge new partnerships to fill gaps within the portfolio, including investments focused on integrating inclusive service delivery with progressive technology adoption opportunities.
• Drive the development and refinement of the theory of change, theory of action, outcome and impact goals for the Market Development body of work, in close collaboration with the CWIS Deputy Director, WSH Asia team and TTC initiative.
• In conjunction with the WSH DDSPM, provides support to WSH initiative leads in developing and sharpening their strategic plans with a high level of rigor, including refinement and documentation of strategy, initiative and portfolio level theories of change and action.
• Support the processes to define outcome and impact goals, metrics and indicators for the strategy and individual bodies of work, including design of tools to supervise progress and learning in strategy execution.
• Provide cross-cutting strategic support to the CWIS, Asia and TTC initiatives to foster collaboration, ensure strategic alignment, and appropriate prioritization of partner’s time and attention.
• Contribute to the identification and implementation of research and analytical needs to support learning for strategic decision making.
• Collaborate with grantees and other partners to improve impact of projects and ensure grants are meeting strategy goals. This will include reviewing grantee progress, budgets, and results; conducting site visits; and convening meetings of key partners.

Your Experience

• Demonstrated sophisticated project management skills and a experience leading or managing multiple projects simultaneously.
• Demonstrated high degree of rigor and strong problem-solving skills; creative problem solver with a focus on achieving results.
• Commitment to foundation Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals, and track record of furthering DEI objectives in previous work experience.
• Able to negotiate, persuade, and build coalitions without formal authority.
• 5-7 years of experience in the water and sanitation sector, philanthropy/non-profit sector, management consulting or related fields.
• Strong great teammate with excellent interpersonal skills; strong ability to coordinate sophisticated projects; ability to collaborate across functions and geographies and transition projects to other colleagues successfully.
• Proven strength in structured problem solving and planning with the capability to identify and communicate frameworks to facilitate strategy refinement, analyze core issues, and increase clarity and transparency of decisions, trade-offs and impact on financial and organizational resources.
• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally critical behavior with a diverse range of people.
• Demonstrated understanding of sanitation service delivery models, government/utility responsibilities, ground-breaking sanitation technologies and solutions.
• Experience working within a philanthropic or grant-making organization.
• Ability to effectively alternate between thinking strategically and performing at high quality.
• Outstanding written and verbal communicator. Strong preparation and presentation of executive-level information.

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Depending upon your work location, we may require proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 and any recommended booster doses. All employees based in the United States are to provide proof of full vaccination upon hire and any recommended boosters, subject to applicable laws.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.