Operations Manager, Kenya

Position Overview 

Educate!, a fast-growing and award-winning social enterprise, is seeking the Operations Manager to drive our operations work in Kenya as we work towards our organizational vision of measurably impacting millions of students across Africa each year. In this role, you’ll report to the Managing Director and be responsible for building and overseeing the systems that enable our operations to run efficiently and effectively. This includes setting up and running operations that support our Out of School Youth Program, SkillUp as well as entire country operations. You will ensure we are building and experimenting with diverse systems to optimize our operations processes and maximize efficiency and effectiveness.  In addition, you will lead, coach, inspire, and build a passionate and results-oriented team that will drive the realization of our ambition over the next years. 

The right person for this role is someone who thrives in a high-growth environment and is able to build stable and scalable systems and continuously improve them. Able to oversee a team and see through to results while also managing, guiding, coaching, and supporting them. Should be comfortable using data to improve operations. You should be open to learning from other industries, adopting new ways of working, and changing processes based on feedback. A driven, creative systems builder & problem-solver who is motivated by removing obstacles to help operations teams design and scale high-impact operations systems. 

Sound like you or someone you know? Read below, visit our careers page to learn more about Educate!, 

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1.  introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 
2.  delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 390,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives 

Country Operations oversight  30%

• Lead the country annual, quarterly and monthly planning and ensure clear articulation and thorough implementation of the key operations priorities
• Map out end-to-end logistics workflows and ensure systems build that enables distribution of field materials.
• Coordinate with the MD, Program managers and Finance Manager to identify gaps, challenges and solutions within operations with the goal of creating a cost-effective operating strategies to address such challenges
• Lead the  development of the operations workflows and tools to help teams operate effectively and drive the systems and processes standardization across all areas of operations
• Work closely with the Managing Director, program managers and Field Operations Manager to create procurement schedules for all field operation activities.
• Solve operations-related challenges based on deep research from reputable sources including peer organizations
• Ensure that the Common Cost Sheet is updated always and is 100% accurate
• Lead all country ops logistics planning and execution, including all staff logistics and retreats/meetings logistics 

Leadership, Culture & Performance Management 20%

• Manage the operations team to achieve set goals and objectives and maintain overall oversight of work allocation
• Develop capacity building initiatives for all the operations teams and build a culture of continuous learning within the team
• Establish and maintain a strong, positive and engaged team culture. Promote Educate!’s cultural tenets within the team. 
• Ensure a healthy pipelining and proactive talent management and workforce planning within the team
• Lead interdepartmental collaborative meetings to understand changes in the programs to inform the operations priorities
• Represent the operations in inter-departmental and strategic meetings
• Lead the annual performance reviews, provide feedback to the teams and lead training that equips the team to perform at their best. Identify areas of growth for the operations team and putting in place training and coaching initiatives to support the growth of the team

Operations Budgeting and Budget management 20%

• Lead the annual and quarterly budgeting and budget management processes for the operations department
• Lead the budget review for the operations department through the monthly and quarterly Budget versus Actual (BvA) process and ensure corrective actions are taken, where necessary
• Participate in the development of Quarterly operations goals and annual operations work plans
• Track operations budget consumption and ensure 100% fidelity to the set budgets.
• Flag potential budgets overspend and initiate the process of getting additional budget through a budget memo process
• Ensure full articulation and compliance to Budget manager’s guide in all operations work and across the teams

Procurement and procurement policies compliance  30%

• Develop and execute procurement plans and ensure that all programs procurement support and delivery is a top priority
• Implement the procurement policy and strategy and promote purchasing best practices to drive a culture of prudence in resource utilization and management.
• Ensure procurement processes are complete, accurate, documented and in  compliance with relevant laws and Educate! Policies
• Anticipate procurement needs to pre-select competitive vendors, and create systems to track and strategically guard against common procurement challenges
• Liaise with user departments to prepare monthly, quarterly and annual procurement plans to ensure timely closure of procurement needs.  
• Ensure that standard operating procedures for the procurement function are understood and applied by staff. 
• Lead the process of prequalification of service providers in anticipation of procurement needs
• Seek and act on feedback from end users on the quality of products delivered and general service levels to ensure value for money and to consistently deliver on excellence. 

Qualifications 

• Experience working in a high-growth startup organization - adopting new systems and structures as part of the growth.
• Experience managing medium to large-sized operational teams at scale and balancing multiple priorities 
• Comfortable working with data, numbers, and reports with basic budget management experience
• Strong orientation to team culture and cross-functional work.
• Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree with at least 6 years of operations leadership experience
• A good fit with our Five Cultural Tenets (see “What is Educate! About?” Below; learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here. 

Location Details

• Successful candidates would need to be based in Nairobi
• We have a hybrid work philosophy! Teammates work from our offices twice per week and attend monthly team socials and culture-building events. 

Terms

• Salary will be based on market factors and commensurate with experience.
• Benefits will align with the country of hire and typically include medical and travel insurance, flexibility on work hours and hybrid work, paid leave plus one week of office closure over the December holidays, and more.

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 
2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.
3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.
5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the Chief Executive Officer— is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.