Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Senior Officer, Advocacy – Product Introduction (Infectious Disease) – Nairobi
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Location:
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Salary:$56,000 - $98,000 / YEAR
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Posted:9 hours ago
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Category:Communication and Advocacy
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Deadline:30/12/2025
JOB DESCRIPTION
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 mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation”s work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation”s objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation”s resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage diverse stakeholders and promote innovative solutions that advance our program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs and Foundation Communications to build the environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives.
The Africa Regional Office (ARO) works to enable the foundation’s ambitious goals of scaling evidence-based interventions that target a range of diseases and socio-economic conditions which are endemic across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The team executes its responsibility through direct country engagement to deploy interventions and delivery models, and by building the partner architecture to replicate successful interventions and models across multiple countries.
Application Deadline: 30/12/2025
Your Role
As Senior Officer, Advocacy – Product Introduction (Infectious Diseases) you will report to the Deputy Director, Program Advocacy & Communications (PAC), ARO and work in a hybrid work arrangement from our Nairobi, Kenya office. You will help build an enabling environment for policy and financing to advance the research, development and introduction of infectious disease products/interventions. This role bridges research and development with downstream introduction, ensuring that innovative products are accessible, accepted, adopted, and sustainably integrated into government-led systems, in alignment with country priorities. You will collaborate with Program Strategy Teams (PSTs) working on infectious diseases, the Africa team and wider foundation advocacy teams to connect innovation, policy, regulation, and advocacy, by advancing strategically aligned investments and facilitating advocacy efforts for complex product introduction, with a focus on advancing work in priority countries for the elimination of malaria and reduction of deaths due to TB and HIV/AIDS on the continent.
You are a creative, thoughtful, and curious leader who identifies as a problem solver, trusted business partner, mentor, and subject matter expert for policy/advocacy. You have an in-depth understanding of biotechnology policy, regulatory systems, country-level policy and financing needs, as well as the political economy shaping successful R&D, introduction, and scale-up of new tools in Africa. You can effectively communicate complex advocacy and policy solutions.
What You’ll Do
- Co-develop advocacy strategies to address political, policy, and regulatory barriers to both R&D progress and introduction and scaling of high-impact infectious disease innovations, with emphasis on complex biotechnology products, in priority geographies.
- Build close relationships in priority countries to ensure that advocacy and policy engagement reflects and reinforces national priorities, supporting countries to set their own research, adoption, and scale-up agendas, and to exercise leadership in regional and global forums.
- Serve as a senior resource on high-impact and emerging interventions for infectious diseases, particularly those with potential to dramatically reshape health delivery costs and reach, requiring new policy paradigms, regulatory innovation, and robust public engagement strategies.
- Coordinate with governments, development partners, regional bodies, and advocacy stakeholders to align infectious disease innovations with national health strategies, optimize financing, and strengthen enabling systems—including biosafety, ethics, and product approval processes.
- Analyze R&D evidence with country scale-up approaches, ensuring evidence informs policy and financing decisions.
- Oversee complex, performance-based contracts and grants supporting advocacy for infectious disease product introduction, ensuring high-quality execution and accountability.
- Manage partnerships and grantee relationships to foster collective learning, advocacy impact, and accountability.
- Collaborate across foundation teams and workstreams to align products, policy, regulatory, and financing, leveraging cross-sector opportunities to amplify advocacy impact.
Your Experience
- Minimum 10 years’ relevant experience with advanced degree in medicine, public health, health economics, public policy, biotechnology, or similar fields.
- Proven understanding of biotechnology R&D ecosystems, including the regulatory, ethical, and political factors influencing development and deployment in African contexts.
- Experience communicating around policy and advocacy for complex product introduction and scale, working with governments, academic institutions, NGOs, private sector, and professional associations.
- Experience engaging with national and regional regulatory authorities, ethics committees, and policy frameworks governing biotechnology and infectious disease tools in Africa.
- Experience in product adoption and scale in LMIC settings is an asset.
- Understanding of health systems and the economic, social, and political factors influencing infectious disease outcomes in SSA.
- Experience building partnerships and working collaboratively to meet shared objectives, orchestrate effective decisions across diverse partners, and align innovation with public priorities.
- Ability to navigate complexity and ambiguity, solve problems, and manage relationships in a fast-paced environment.
- Strong communication skills for conveying complex situations clearly to diverse audiences.
Other Attributes
- Comfortable in diverse cultural, geographic, and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior and commitment to development issues.
- Ability to travel up to 40% internationally.
- Competency 1: Demonstrated track record in supporting country-level infectious disease product advocacy and strategy implementation.
- Competency 2: Demonstrated understanding of biotechnology regulatory systems, biosafety, and political economy in African contexts.
- Competency 3: Proven experience supporting projects requiring internal and external collaboration.
- Competency 4: Ability to identify game-changer interventions and advocate internally and externally for investment.
- Competency 5: Demonstrated ability to work efficiently and diplomatically, as part of a team, with flexibility and adaptability.
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
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.
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