School Meals Accelerator: Public Narrative Consultant

Purpose of this role: 
 

This role is part of the Engagement Team of the Accelerator, which is responsible for ensuring that the Accelerator’s engagement at the political level continues to enable and facilitate its work, generating more support, tapping into diverse networks, and deepening relationships that can continue to create a favorable authorizing environment for the initiative. The Consultant will ensure that the narrative of the Accelerator and the public voice of the Director communicate not only the successes and concrete progress that the Accelerator is making but also transmits its ethos and systemic way of working through innovative and thoughtful storytelling. 
 

The School Meals Accelerator is not designed for global advocacy (producing global events, campaigns and the like) and will mostly not be applying traditional mass communication strategies (website, social media, etc); it will rely on the School Meals Coalition and its Secretariat for those functions. Instead, it will be using more targeted, intentional communication avenues to reach specific stakeholders, strengthen relationships, and support key partners in the growing network it will be orchestrating. Therefore, this role about developing thoughtful narrative tools that can support strategic engagement, relationship building and thought leadership. It is about finding new ways of communicating the innovative nature of the Accelerator that can reach the intended audience in a strategic way.  
 

The postholder is also expected to coordinate closely with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to ensure aligned approaches, shared messaging, and coherent support to countries. 

Responsibilities: 
 

1) Strategic Storytelling & Narrative Development 

• Develop and lead a coherent narrative approach for the Accelerator that draws on evidence, learning, and lived experience across SMA and its partners to help diverse stakeholders understand what the Accelerator is doing, how change is unfolding, and why it matters. 

• Work with Accelerator colleagues to interpret complex ideas, system dynamics, and emerging learning, and translate these into clear, audience-appropriate narrative framing that supports strategic engagement, relationship-building, and leadership dialogue. 

• Support the Director and senior leadership in shaping and drafting speeches, briefings, and narrative materials that articulate both progress and learning, and that convey the Accelerator’s systemic ethos rather than only outcomes or success stories. 

• Curate insights, examples, and stories emerging from country engagement and partnerships, and use these to inform how the Accelerator positions itself politically and institutionally, strengthening credibility, trust, and shared understanding. 

• Collaborate with technical teams and partners to translate data, research, and programmatic learning into narrative materials that support sense-making and illuminate systemic pathways for change, rather than promoting predefined messages or campaigns.
   

2) Stakeholder Engagement & Collaboration 

• Work closely with Accelerator team, partners and communities to build trusted relationships that enable the sharing of authentic stories and lived experience. 

• Lead on event preparation and public engagement for the Accelerator, by collaborating with the School Meals Coalition ecosystem, including leading on narrative and messaging for Accelerator leadership and briefing materials.  

• Develop communication, narrative and branding materials and guidance for the Governing Committee of the Accelerator, its founding partners and other stakeholders to ensure consistent communication.  

• Facilitate storytelling workshops or interviews with partners, Accelerator technical team cells, and other internal and external stakeholders.
   

3) People Leadership, Ways of Working & Culture 

• Model SMA’s systemic leadership mindsets and foster a collaborative, psychologically safe culture where diverse perspectives, emerging insights, and lived experience meaningfully shape shared storytelling and narrative work. 

• Strengthen coherence and alignment across teams by grounding narrative work in country realities and technical insights, promoting intentional communication, clarity of roles, and relational ways of working when navigating sensitive stories or stakeholder expectations.
   

4) Learning, Continuous Improvement & Knowledge 

• Capture and synthesize insights from country engagement, governance, and partnerships, using reflective practice cycles to evolve SMA’s narrative approach and ensure messages reflect real learning and systemic shifts. 

• Build institutional memory by consolidating stories, examples, and system insights into accessible knowledge products, using feedback to refine messaging and support adaptive implementation across SMA teams and partners. 

Individual developmental expectations within the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework:
 

This role operates within the School Meals Accelerator’s systemic leadership approach. All SMA roles are expected to be enacted in line with the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework, which sets out six shared leadership mindsets, core leadership practices and more systemically demanding practices, that guide how we work in complex, fast-changing environments. The Framework also describes “ways of engaging with complexity”, which reflect how individuals make sense of and act in uncertain, interdependence situations. 
 
While developmental maturity and role seniority are independent, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade to support clarity and fairness in recruitment and early employment. 
 
For this Consultancy level II role, the minimum expectation is: 

 
Reflective engagement with complexity: “Staff members are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment”. 
 
As set out in the Framework, these expectations represent floors, not ceilings. Ways of engaging with complexity are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or performance management, and are used to support reflection, learning and development over time, rather than ranking or judgement. 

What the Systemic Leadership Framework Means for Your Recruitment and Role: 
 

All roles in the School Meals Accelerator are expected to be enacted in line with the Systemic Leadership Framework. In recruitment and selection, the Framework supports informed conversations about how candidates make sense of complexity, uncertainty and systemic change, alongside assessment of technical expertise and role fit. 
 
In ongoing work, the Framework provides a shared orientation to “how we work here” and supports individual and collective learning over time. 

Qualifications: 
 

Education: 

Advanced university degree in Communications, Journalism, Media Studies, Marketing, International Relations, Social Sciences, or another relevant field; or a first university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience and/or advanced training. 

Experience:

• At least 5 years’ experience in international development, strategic communications, journalism, community building, social impact storytelling, or policy advocacy is strongly valued; experience working with government‑led processes is a plus. 

• Demonstrated international experience collaborating with diverse partners (governments, International Financial Institutions, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, academia) across regions and organizational levels. 

• Experience shaping the narrative of early‑stage or systems‑change initiatives, translating complex ideas, government insights, and founder intent into clear, compelling, emotionally resonant stories. 

• Proven ability to use strategic storytelling for partnership‑building, crafting narrative materials and high‑quality content (speeches, briefs, strategy decks, case studies) that strengthen trust, alignment, and shared purpose. 

• Strong insight‑gathering and interviewing skills, able to distill perspectives from governments, communities, and technical teams, and adapt narratives in fast‑moving, ambiguous environments where strategy and positioning evolve. 

Knowledge and Skills:

• Exceptional storytelling and writing skills, able to craft clear, emotionally resonant narratives from complex, systems‑level ideas.

• Strong narrative‑framing and sense‑making ability — turning insights, interviews, and technical information into coherent story arcs. 

• Excellent stakeholder‑engagement and facilitation skills, including interviewing, co‑creation, and relationship‑centered communication. 

• Ability to produce high‑quality content across formats (briefs, speeches, decks, case studies) and collaborate effectively with designers or content creators. 

• Comfort working in fast‑moving, ambiguous environments, adapting and iterating narrative quickly as strategy or context evolves. 

• Familiarity with multimedia and digital communication workflows (storyboarding, basic production, content adaptation) to support intentional, targeted communication. 

 
Languages: 

English mother‑tongue level is required for this role; intermediate (level B) in a second official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish). 
 
  

At the heart of the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework are six leadership mindsets. 
These mindsets describe shared orientations that shape how situations are interpreted and what kinds of action feel legitimate or possible in system-level change work. 

They are not competencies or values statements, but shared ways of making sense of complex situations that shape leadership practice, particularly under pressure or uncertainty. 

The six SMA leadership mindsets are: 

• We see systems change as starting with us: We notice and work with how our roles, assumptions and responses shape what becomes possible in the system. 

• We experiment our way forward: We use disciplined experimentation and learning to make progress in conditions of uncertainty. 

• We put countries’ needs first: We orient our work around the priorities, contexts and capacities of countries, rather than organisational convenience or external agendas. 

• We value different perspectives – even when they clash: We work productively with difference, tension and disagreement to support learning and systemic change. 

• We teach and learn from one another: We treat learning as a shared, ongoing responsibility and use everyday work as a source of individual and collective development. 

• We are intentional about how and when we act – not simply defaulting to urgency: We treat pace and timing as deliberate leadership choices, choosing actions that support learning and lasting change rather than activity for its own sake. 

The mindsets are mutually reinforcing rather than sequential. Effective systemic leadership involves working across all of them, rather than privileging one at the expense of others. 

Within each mindset, the Framework identifies leadership practices that describe observable ways of working — how leadership shows up in action. The Accelerator has 30 core leadership practices (5 per mindset), which are foundational practices expected of everyone working in the Accelerator, regardless of role or grade. They support effective participation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. 

Ways of engaging with complexity: 

The Framework also describes different ways of engaging with complexity, drawing on adult development theory. Ways of engaging with complexity describe how leadership practices are enacted, not which practices are permitted. They are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or role, and are context-sensitive. 

The Framework describes four broad ways of engaging with complexity: 

• Habitual engagement 
  People tend to respond to situations through familiar roles, routines and immediate reactions. What is felt or thought in the moment tends to drive action, with limited separation between observation, interpretation and response, especially under pressure. 

• Reflective engagement 
  People are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment. 

• Intentional engagement 
  People actively work with their assumptions, emotions and roles as part of ongoing practice. They are better able to pause, make deliberate choices about how to respond, and adapt their actions in real time under conditions of uncertainty. 

• Systemic engagement 
  People understand their actions as part of wider system dynamics shaped by relationships, power, history and context. They act with awareness of timing, ripple effects and shared responsibility, and are able to support learning and capacity beyond their own role. 
   

These ways of engaging with complexity do not represent a linear progression or a single “ideal” endpoint. Individuals may operate in different ways in different situations. To support clarity and fairness, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade, which represent floors, not ceilings. 

What the Framework is used for:

The SMA Systemic Leadership Framework is: 

• a shared developmental reference for leadership practice; 

• a basis for reflection, feedback and learning; 

• a way of embedding systemic leadership expectations into everyday work. 

It is not: 

• a competency framework; 

• a performance rating system; 

• a leadership pipeline; 

• a tool for ranking or scoring individuals.