Mercy Corps is a global humanitarian organization working in over 40 countries at the front lines of today’s biggest crises. Mercy Corps has built a reputation for innovative economic development programming, particularly working with start-ups, and hosts a venture capital arm called Mercy Corps Ventures. Its youth employment work places a focus on jobtech (read more here), which it has worked with for over a decade – investing, supporting product innovation, and conducting research on the opportunities for the sector. In late 2021, Mercy Corps launched the Jobtech Alliance, an ecosystem-building initiative around inclusive jobtech in Africa.

The Program

The Jobtech Alliance has a portfolio of grants which allows us to conduct a range of acceleration activities with jobtech start-ups. We partner with jobtech start-ups across 10 African markets to support strategy, product and operational innovations which make their services more viable and scalable, more inclusive and/or delivering better quality jobs for the users they serve. The program deploys a range of supports to start-ups including technical assistance, project delivery support, grant capital and connections to partners. In Uganda, we also have a component training refugees to access these opportunities in jobtech.

The Position

We are recruiting a Senior Venture Building Manager responsible for end-to-end engagement with jobtech start-ups. The Senior Venture Building Manager will be responsible for developing a pipeline of exciting jobtech platforms with potential for significant employment outcomes, working with them to develop concepts for Mercy Corps’ interventions, managing selection and onboarding, and managing advisory support to realise results. S/he will also be the Venture Building lead for startups seeking to onboard refugees in Uganda. S/he will be well-equipped to interact with corporates and bigger start-ups and will bring a strong network. Expect us to move fast, make mistakes, learn a lot, and re-start a few times. You’ll be traveling up to 30% of the time across different African markets.

Essential Responsibilities

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

• Contribute to the overall venture building strategy of the program, and our private sector engagement model for Jobtech for Refugees.

PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT & PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

• Map, develop and maintain relationships with relevant external stakeholders to widen pipeline, including accelerators and start-up networks.
• Develop a pipeline of exciting jobtech start-ups across multiple African markets with the potential to achieve greater scale, impact, and/or inclusivity (particular focus in Uganda)
• Work with pipeline start-ups to identify potential concepts for partnership, collaboratively deciding on packages of support. Where beneficial, identify linkages between Mercy Corps country portfolios and pipeline start-ups.
• Lead due diligence up to review by the Selection Committee and oversee the contracting and onboarding of selected start-ups.

VENTURE BUILDING, TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE, ADVISORY

• Manage interventions with partner start-ups, coordinating external technical assistance providers, deployment of finance, and connections to other project partners.
• Coordinate with Jobtech for Refugees Project Manager on refugee-related sprints.
• Monitor performance of portfolio, continuing to adapt interventions to maximise impact. Feed back into overarching program strategy.
• Manage partner milestone reporting, fund disbursement from Mercy Corps, and monitoring requirements.
• Where suitable, Venture Builders could be deployed for brief secondments to partners to support implementation of interventions.

LEARNING & INFLUENCE

• We operate as a ‘do-tank’, ensuring that learnings from this emerging sector are shared back to the community. Document lessons learned, write up experiences from portfolio start-ups for the Jobtech Alliance blog, host webinars for the Jobtech Alliance on key topics, or conduct exploratory research on emerging topics – you’re the boss.
• In partnership with portfolio start-ups and other Jobtech Alliance members, identify key research topics and build collaborative research on key topics surfacing from our work.
• Where relevant, collaborate with country teams to share lessons learned and identify synergies and opportunities for integration and expansion.

Supervisory Responsibility

None.

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Director/Jobtech Alliance

Works Directly With: Start-ups, External partners, Research and MEL Director, Venture builders, Finance/Contracts Manager, Mercy Corps country teams, Mercy Corps Youth Employment Technical Support Unit

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualifications & Transferable Skills

• A history of excellence in achieving results and self-management.
• Minimum of 6 years’ experience working with start-ups, VCs, accelerators or other start-up ecosystem actors. This could involve working on business strategy, market research, product, operations, or investment. We welcome diversity of experience.
• Through-the-roof EQ, with excellent communication skills (written and verbal), and a collaborative approach to working with others. Experience in senior management teams and working with senior leaders in the start-ups space.
• Outstanding analytical capacity, with capacity to bring clarity for others and make quick decisions.
• Experience working in or with jobtech platforms is a strong plus.
• Other pluses include experiences with portfolio management or MBA/equivalent.

Success Factors

You are an entrepreneurial self-manager, who is passionate about start-ups and employment impact. You have through-the-roof EQ, with an ability to build new relationships and manage existing ones effectively. You have outstanding analytical capacity, and can quickly see both business as well as impact opportunities. You love getting your hands dirty.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

Based in Kampala (for Ugandan nationals) or Nairobi (for Kenyan nationals)

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer that does not tolerate discrimination on any basis. We actively seek out diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be collectively stronger and have sustained global impact.

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

As a safeguarding measure, Mercy Corps screens all potential US-Based employees. This is done following the conclusion of recruitment and prior to assuming full employment.

Our screening process is designed to be transparent and completed in partnership with new Team Members. You will have the opportunity to disclose any prior convictions at the conclusion of the recruitment process before the check is initiated. We ask that you do not disclose any prior convictions in your application materials or during the recruitment process.