Chief Program Officer

Role: Chief Program Officer 
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Location: Nairobi preferably, or any other location within Africa

About Living Goods

Community health is one of the most proven ways to save lives and we are seeing growing commitments and investments from African Governments towards Community Health Systems. But as systems scale, many governments struggle to maintain quality, control costs, and deliver consistent results. Scale without performance puts lives at risk.

Living Goods is a government performance partner that helps countries build affordable, intelligent, high-impact community health systems. We work alongside governments to design, embed, and strengthen the operating foundations that make care delivery reliable, measurable, and continuously improving. At the center of our approach is our Performance Operating System for community health. And it’s aimed at scale from the start.

We treat cost as a design parameter, helping governments maximize health impact within real budgets. We combine rigorous evidence with operational learning to understand what drives outcomes and improves performance. And we build intelligent systems that learn, adapt, and improve as they scale—using data, digital tools, and AI to strengthen performance over time.

Founded in Uganda in 2007, Living Goods works alongside governments across Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Uganda to strengthen national community health systems. Our approach is backed by randomized controlled trials and has contributed to reductions in child mortality of more than 27%,
while delivering life-saving care for about $2 per person served.

About the Role
Living Goods is hiring a Chief Program Officer to lead programs that bring life-saving health services to millions of families.

The Chief Program Officer (CPO) provides strategic leadership and operational oversight across Living Goods' global program portfolio, ensuring high-quality, evidence-driven delivery at scale. The CPO sets program strategy and priorities, stewards the frameworks and tools that enable consistent country-level execution, and leads the organization's Performance, Evidence and Insights function, ensuring that robust evidence, learning, and performance insights drive strategic decision-making, program improvement, and organizational impact.

The role also shapes Living Goods' innovation agenda, stewarding the pipeline of new approaches, tools, and delivery models from concept through adoption and scale to define the next frontier of community health impact. Critically, the CPO serves as the connective tissue between program and technology, ensuring that digital health tools and data systems are purposefully embedded into delivery models to strengthen community health worker performance and improve health outcomes.

The CPO leads disciplined geographic expansion, strengthens donor and fundraising alignment, and ensures that program knowledge is systematically generated, captured, and shared across the organization, maximizing Living Goods' impact, efficiency, and scale

Reporting Scope
The Chief Program Officer (CPO) reports to the Chief Executive Officer and serves as a member of the Global Executive Team. The role provides strategic leadership and oversight across the organization's Performance, Evidence and Insights, Innovation, Program Strategy, and Country Incubation functions, with accountability for program strategy, budget stewardship, fund transfers, and decision-making as set out in Living Goods' Delegation of Authority Framework.

Key Responsibilities
Program Strategy & Portfolio Support: (30% of time)

• Provide strategic direction and shared capabilities that countries can draw on to strengthen impact, efficiency, and scale. 
• Set global program strategy and priorities across existing and new initiatives, aligned with Living Goods' strategy and Theory of Change. 
• Enable strategic portfolio prioritization and trade-offs, offering frameworks and insights to inform leadership decision-making. 
• Shape geographic expansion and portfolio evolution, including criteria for scale, focus, consolidation, or exit. 
• Set strategic direction for the innovation pipeline and its pathways to country adoption and scale. 
• Build and steward strategic partnerships, including new government partnerships that countries can leverage where they add value. 
• Shape fundraising priorities and decisions based on program strategy and performance insights.

Execution for Impact: (20% of time)

• Strengthen country-level delivery performance by providing shared frameworks, digital and data tools, and performance oversight — ensuring technology serves as a force multiplier for program quality and efficacy.
• Design and steward global program frameworks, standards, and models based on evidence to guide consistent, high-quality delivery at country level.
• Own and evolve the performance operating system — including tools, practices, and ROI focus — used across countries.
• Enable cross-country performance review, learning, and continuous improvement.
• Drive and monitor the innovation stage gates to optimize innovation pipeline delivery and lifecycle.
• Serve as the programmatic voice in shaping how digital health tools are designed and deployed — partnering closely with the CTO to ensure technology investments are grounded in frontline delivery realities and community health worker needs, rather than owning the technology itself.
• Work with the technology team to ensure shared digital and data tools are fit-for-purpose, translating program requirements into actionable inputs for the technology roadmap.
• Ensure that digital tools genuinely support community health worker performance and that adoption is embedded in program quality standards.
• Improve ways of working, systems, and processes between global and country teams to reduce friction and duplication..

Performance, Evidence and Insights: (20 % of time)

• Generate decision-grade evidence and insights to inform strategy, strengthen programs, and improve outcomes.
• Ensure robust analytics, monitoring, and independent research and evaluations across programs and innovations to build credible evidence and learning.
• Generate and synthesize insights from data and evidence to inform program design, performance, and decision-making.
• Translate evidence into clear insights and narratives for countries, leadership, partners, and donors.
• Ensure the documentation and knowledge management system is effective in supporting learning, replication, scale, and the organization's thought leadership agenda.

New Countries: (15% of time)

• Enable disciplined, repeatable expansion through a clear country scoping and incubation model.
• Define and apply criteria for scoping new countries, aligned to strategy and organizational capacity.
• Design and steward the new country incubation model, including time-bound global support.
• Support and oversee countries during incubation, including direct accountability for readiness and transition to a core country.

Fundraising and Donor Delivery: (15% of time)

• Ensure programmatic integrity and alignment from proposal through delivery and reporting.
• Ensure funding proposals are programmatically sound.
• Provide programmatic input to donor engagement where technical credibility is required.
• Oversee delivery against grant commitments and surface risks early.
• Ensure accurate and coherent programmatic reporting.

Leadership: (Across)

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing global programs team, fostering a culture of excellence, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Serve as a key member of the Senior Leadership Team, contributing to organizational strategy, culture, and cross-functional decision-making.
• Model Living Goods' values and champion equity, inclusion, and community-centred program design.
• Represent Living Goods externally with donors, partners, governments, and global health stakeholders.

The Person We Are Looking For
Living Goods is looking for a strategic program leader who has driven multi-country health delivery at scale and who works fluently across program and technology.

This is a role defined by strategic leadership, evidence rigor, and the ability to translate program needs into technology priorities without owning technology delivery itself.

What the Role Requires

• Master's degree or equivalent in public health, international development, business administration, or a related discipline preferred; bachelor's degree required.
• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in global health, international development, or a related field, with significant time working in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Proven track record leading large-scale, multi-country program delivery — ideally in primary healthcare or last-mile service delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to work at the intersection of program and technology, translating digital health investments into measurable impact.
• Experience managing and developing senior teams across geographies and cultures.
• Track record of successful donor engagement, fundraising, and grant management.
• Private sector experience is a serious advantage.
• Bilingual French and English is a serious advantage.
• Willing to travel 30%+ of the time.
• Role based in Nairobi.

How to Apply:
Process
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the position is closed. Early applications are strongly encouraged. 

Compensation
A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience including health insurance and bonus opportunity. The opportunity to be your best while making lives better for those in need.

Living Goods is an equal opportunity employer and will consider every qualified applicant for employment. Living Goods does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Our current job openings are displayed on our website, where you can search for open positions and apply directly. Living Goods does not offer any positions without an interview and never asks candidates for money. If you are asked for money, we strongly recommend that you do not respond and do not send money or personal information. If offered a role at Living Goods, we’ll request consent to complete a background check, which is part of our hiring process.