Senior Technical Director, Health

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is among the world’s leading humanitarian relief and development organizations. For 80 years, the IRC has been at the forefront of every major humanitarian initiative to assist people uprooted by war, persecution, or civil conflict. IRC staff go to the toughest places, implement both immediate response and long lasting programs, and conduct the type of applied research and advocacy the aid community needs to continually push itself to find better solutions for people. In all its country programs and in the US, IRC teams partner with local governments and community organizations to achieve measurable improvements in people’s health, education, safety, power and economic well- being.

IRC technical units (TU) are the organization’s hub for sectoral expertise. Working within IRC’s department of Policy & Practice (P&P), they provide IRC’s 35 plus country offices and emergency response team with world class technical expertise, capacity building and a cross country view of what works to achieve outcomes in terms of both scientific evidence and practical experience. Technical unit Senior Directors are IRC’s programmatic leaders in a particular field. They are responsible for retaining and managing teams that deliver the highest quality technical support to IRC country offices and being thought leaders in their respective fields. At IRC, this means leading focused research agendas that close the most critical gaps in the humanitarian evidence base; influencing donor behavior to support interventions and innovations proven cost effective to achieve positive change in people’s lives; and representing IRC in the media and in critical aid fora.

IRC’s health programs comprise the largest proportion of its overall program budget and are essential to both IRC emergency response and long term programming worldwide. Across IRC’s five regions, staff partner with ministries of health, community organizations and other NGOs to reduce morbidity and mortality; improve the lives of women and children; and strengthen national health systems. Located in headquarters offices that include New York, London, DC and Geneva, 45 health unit staff support these country programs with expertise in emergency, primary, environmental and reproductive health care. IRC’s strategic ambition to improve and generate the evidence essential to achieve meaningful impact in people’s lives is translated by a small health research team that leads organizational research priorities designed to galvanize attention and resources to closing the relevant evidence gaps.

Scope:

The Senior Technical Director is a key member of the Policy and Practice leadership team and a member of IRC’s larger Senior Leadership Group (SLG). As such, the Senior Technical Director has responsibilities in different arenas: 

• As a member of the SLG, the director partners consistently and effectively with IRC regional and country program leadership in order to understand and adapt the team’s technical assistance to the changing contexts and capacities of IRC’s country programs.    

• As a member of the P&P leadership team, the director partners with peer leaders and the Senior Vice President of the department to assure IRC programmatic models are integrated, outcome driven and evidence based and to partner with communication and advocacy colleagues to encourage policy makers, donors and practitioners to target their resources and efforts to interventions that have a positive impact on people’s lives.

• As a leader of the TU, the director provides a clear vision and execution plan that connects the health unit to organizational and department strategy. This includes strategic and consistent representation and fund-raising in both private and public sectors; diligent and disciplined financial and grants management oversight; and the management necessary to leverage diverse competencies, identify and promote talent and create the type of culture and incentives needed to sustain a high performing and energized team of professionals.

Major Responsibilities:

1. ADVOCATE: Act as the most senior advocate in the relevant technical area, regularly communicating the needs and priorities of IRC country programs to donors; participating in high level policy and practice forums; advocating for the adoption of interventions proven to improve people’s health and for resources to enable the IRC and others to meet people’s needs across contexts.  Requires a deep appreciation and support of IRC’s commitment to drive fundamental policy and practice changes that will ensure people receive the wide-ranging support they need in the areas of emergency, primary, environmental and reproductive health care.

2. STEWARD: Develop and implement strategic business development efforts to support IRC country programs and enable the health team to deliver high quality technical assistance, implement a focused research agenda and stay ahead of relevant global health policy and practice decisions.  Bring discipline and rigor to financial and grants management of health unit funds, partnering with colleagues in P&P and Finance departments to harmonize planning, budgeting and reporting.   

3. LEADER: Act as the most senior leader of a talented group of technical leaders, researchers, advocates and operations colleagues, bringing vision, cohesion and authentic intellectual dialogue together to create a strong culture of performance and collaboration. As a senior leader with peers across technical and field based domains, bring collaboration, rigor and solutions to opportunities and challenges IRC faces both in the contexts in which it works, and throughout its operations.  Represent Policy & Practice and the Senior Leaders Group communities consistently in field travel and across teams throughout IRC.

4. MANAGER: Invest deliberately in the support and development of IRC staff within the TU and in support of related technical colleagues in IRC country programs. Responsible for recruitment, retention and assuring IRC has the human resources to deliver superb technical assistance and thought leadership.

Job Qualifications:

Education: MD and/or MPH required.   

Work Experience: A minimum of 15 years of relevant experience, with field and programmatic experience in a donor, NGO or comparable international agency required. Experience and familiarity with global health donors, peer agencies and national contexts required, preferably in humanitarian contexts. Experience and expertise raising funds from bilateral, multilateral and private donors. Leadership and management experience in complex global organization.     

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies: Demonstrated skills and competencies related to public health care delivery in low resource/conflict affected environments. Strategic planning. Private and statutory business development/ fundraising. Understanding of the program life cycle and best practice used by aid organizations to design, implement and measure the progress of interventions. Fluency in the relevance and use of empirical evidence to know what works best to achieve meaningful results for people.  An existing and strong professional network in humanitarian and global health communities. Very strong leadership and management competencies including the ability to bring people along with a stated vision and strategy, and capacity to communicate effectively with IRC field leadership, technical peers, and colleagues in fundraising, communications and advocacy. Excellent public speaking and writing skills are essential. 

Language Skills:  Excellent spoken and written English essential. Proficiency in one other IRC relevant language (French, Arabic, Swahili, etc.) strongly preferred. 

Working Environment: Travel up to 25% of time. Preferably based in NYC but open to discussing other IRC HQ offices.

IRC leading the way from harm to home. 

IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

If you need assistance in the application or hiring process to accommodate a disability, you may request an accommodation at any time. Please contact Talent Acquisitions at IRC.Recruitment@rescue.org. As required by law, the IRC will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees with a known disability.