Senior Manager - Country Engagement, Mental Health

Overview

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Team Overview

CHAI's Mental Health program is one of the organization's newest programs, sitting within our Innovation cluster. Through CHAI's Mental Health Access Initiative (MHAI), it works to expand access to affordable, quality-assured psychotropic medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Severe mental health conditions account for a disproportionate share of the global mental health burden, yet more than 90 percent of people with psychosis in LMICs receive no minimally adequate care.

Following a year of pathfinding work with Ministries of Health, regulators, procurement agencies, clinicians, and people with lived experience, the program has secured multi-year funding to scale. It addresses five interconnected barriers that keep effective, off-patent medicines from reaching patients: product availability and registration, constrained financing, fragmented procurement and weak forecasting, volatile pricing and unreliable supply, and reduced prescribing and distorted demand. The program is currently active in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, and is expanding to six focus countries with the addition of Ghana and a sixth country to be selected.

MHAI is the largest part of CHAI's mental health portfolio, which extends beyond medicines access and beyond MHAI's own focus countries. This role may involve supporting that wider program as well. The program is delivered jointly by CHAI country teams and a small global team, and works closely with CHAI's Global Markets Team, which leads the organization's market shaping work.

Position Overview

The majority of MHAI's work sits at the country level, with CHAI country teams. The program succeeds only if those teams deliver against their work plans and their commitments to Ministries of Health and national stakeholders, while remaining tightly connected to the program's global strategy and its commitments to funders. Reporting to the Program Lead, Mental Health, the Senior Manager, Country Engagement provides strategic direction and support to the program's portfolio of six focus countries, leads the global mental health team's relationship with all six country teams, and sets the team's longer-term strategy for country engagement, including with mental health work not funded through MHAI. The Senior Manager will directly support a subset of countries, sharing day-to-day engagement with the Senior Associate, Country Support, but is accountable for a program-wide view: knowing where each of the six countries stands, where delivery is at risk, and what the program should be learning from them.

The role sits at the hinge between country and global. In one direction, it ensures that country-level priorities, constraints, and evidence shape global strategy, funder reporting and the decisions taken by program leadership. In the other, it ensures that global priorities and funder commitments are translated into country plans that country teams and governments can own and act on. The Senior Manager is the key link through which findings from country teams reach the global team and the funder, and is responsible for making sure they arrive accurately and on time.

This is a senior relationship role as much as a management role. The Senior Manager is expected to hold trusted relationships with country team leadership, senior Ministry of Health officials and national stakeholders, and with the funder, and to represent CHAI credibly with senior external stakeholders, including donors and government officials. Much of the role's influence is exercised without formal authority: country teams report through CHAI's country leadership rather than to the global mental health team, and government and funder counterparts are partners, not reports. The Senior Manager therefore sets direction, secures commitments and course-corrects through the quality of their judgement, relationships, and communication.

CHAI is seeking an experienced, mission-driven Senior Manager to help drive the success of this initiative across sub-Saharan Africa. The successful candidate joins a nascent program at the point where it moves from proving a model to delivering it at scale, working alongside Ministries of Health, regulators, procurement agencies and manufacturers on a problem that has been neglected for decades. We are looking for someone who combines strategic judgement with a willingness to get into the detail, who reads situations and people well, and who communicates clearly in writing, in conversation, and on a slide.

Responsibilities

Country engagement and delivery leadership (35%)

• Provide strategic direction and support to the program's portfolio of six focus countries: lead the mental health team's relationships with all six MHAI country teams, serving as the senior point of contact for country team leadership and maintaining a current, program-wide view of where each country stands against its work plan, objectives and key results, and the program's monitoring and evaluation framework.
• Directly support a subset of focus countries, sharing day-to-day engagement with the Senior Associate, Country Support, while retaining visibility and accountability across all six.
• Ensure country teams deliver against their work plans and their commitments to Ministries of Health, regulators, procurement agencies and other national stakeholders; identify risks to delivery early and work with country and global leadership to resolve them.
• Represent CHAI with senior external stakeholders, including government officials and donors. Build and hold senior relationships with in-country counterparts, including Ministry of Health officials and national stakeholders, alongside the country teams who hold those relationships primarily.
• Travel regularly to focus countries to work alongside country teams, including supporting workshops, technical assistance, and government engagements during periods of peak delivery.
• Develop a in-depth understanding of the programmatic, political and operational context in each country, and ensure it is accurately reflected in program decisions, funder communications and materials.
• Provide technical support and guidance to country teams across the program's core workstreams, including product registration, financing, procurement and forecasting, pricing and supply, and demand, drawing on the global team, CHAI's Global Markets Team and other CHAI programs, and identify where country teams need additional technical, analytical or human resources and mobilize to fill the gap.

Country-global alignment and funder engagement (25%)

• Serve as the primary bridge between country teams, the global team and the funder: ensure that country-level priorities, constraints, and evidence inform global strategy, and that global priorities and funder commitments are translated into country plans that teams and governments can act on.
• Create and review major reports and donor deliverables, leading the country-facing components: ensure that findings, results, and lessons from all six countries are accurately synthesized, quality-assured and communicated, and that reporting reflects country realities rather than smoothing over them.
• Communicate grant priorities, deadlines, and expectations to country teams clearly and early, and represent country teams' perspectives in global planning and funder discussions.
• Hold a working relationship with the funder's program team alongside the Program Lead, including participation in reporting cycles, review meetings and country visits.
• Prepare and quality-assure program updates, presentations, and briefing materials for the funder, partners, CHAI leadership and external audiences.

Program, financial and grant management (20%)

• Lead annual and quarterly planning cycles with country teams, including objective setting, milestone definition and budget alignment, ensuring country plans are ambitious, realistic, and consistent with program-level strategy and grant commitments.
• Oversee tracking of progress against country work plans, objectives and key results, and the program's monitoring and evaluation framework, and use it to drive decisions and course corrections, not only to report.
• Coordinate across CHAI global teams, including the Global Markets Team, and external partners to align workstreams, sequence dependencies across countries and avoid duplication.
• Support financial management across the program, particularly at the country level: work with country teams to build and monitor budgets, track spend against plan, anticipate reallocation needs and ensure grant compliance, in coordination with the Program Lead and CHAI's finance and operations teams.

Team leadership and mentorship (10%)

• Manage and mentor junior staff both directly and through the matrix, including setting objectives, providing regular and timely feedback, and supporting professional development for staff who report to the role and for country team staff whose work it guides.
• Coach and build the capacity of country team staff in program management, analysis, stakeholder engagement and communication, recognizing that many are new to mental health and to CHAI's program model.
• Foster a strong team culture based on CHAI's values across a matrixed team spanning six countries and a global team

Program development and cross-country learning (10%)

• Set the mental health team's long-term strategy for country engagement, including how the global team works with CHAI country teams beyond the six MHAI focus countries and how it engages with mental health projects not funded through MHAI.
• Lead the capture and dissemination of lessons learned and best practices across the six countries, through briefs, convenings, regular cross-country calls and, where appropriate, joint publications and conference abstracts with country teams.
• Bring relevant learning from CHAI's more established programs and market shaping work into the mental health portfolio, and adapt country-specific tools, templates and approaches into resources other teams can use.
• Support proposal development for a wide variety of funders, including drafting country components, aligning country teams around proposed scope and budgets, and contributing to program strategy, including the scoping and onboarding of new focus countries.
• Other responsibilities as needed.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in public health, public policy, business, economics or a related field, with 7+ years of relevant professional experience, including experience in LMIC health systems.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-country or multi-stakeholder programs, including planning, delivery tracking, budget oversight and risk management.
• Track record of building and holding trusted senior relationships with government officials, funders, and colleagues across cultures, and of representing an organization credibly in senior external settings.
• Demonstrated ability to influence, align and secure commitments without formal authority, in a matrixed organization where the people whose work you depend on do not report to you.
• Strong strategic and analytical skills, including the ability to structure an ambiguous problem, weigh quantitative and qualitative evidence, and translate country-level detail into program-level insight for decision-makers, and program-level strategy into country-level action.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to produce clear, compelling reports and slides for funders and senior audiences.
• Experience supervising, coaching and developing staff, including remote or decentralized teams.
• Experience creating and reviewing major donor reports and deliverables, managing funder relationships, and contributing to proposal development.
• Experience with program budgeting and financial management, including in low-resource or country-office settings.
• Ability to work independently, set priorities and manage multiple workstreams in a decentralized, multicultural environment.
• Comfort moving between strategic engagement and hands-on delivery support, with no task considered too small or too administrative.
• Willingness and ability to travel 20-40%, including to settings where travel logistics can be demanding.
• English language fluency, both written and verbal.

Advantages

• Experience working within a CHAI country team, or leading a country-based team at a comparable organization.
• Experience in pharmaceutical access, regulatory, procurement, supply chain or health financing in LMICs, ideally including market shaping.
• Direct experience working with Ministries of Health in sub-Saharan Africa, including in one or more of MHAI's focus countries.
• Experience managing large institutional grants and their reporting cycles.
• Exposure to mental health programming or policy.
• French language proficiency.

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