Chief of Staff to the CEO, Internal

Posted Aug 7

Position Overview

Educate!, a high-growth and award-winning non-profit social enterprise, is seeking a dynamic Chief of Staff to partner with the co-founder and CEO to enhance CEO effectiveness, manage key initiatives, drive strategic org building initiatives, and support org operating health. This role will complement an externally focused Chief of Staff, who supports funder management, board engagement, and external communications. 

We’ve grown 20x since 2016 and are at the cusp of another wave of growth. We’re looking for a strategic, analytical and flexible candidate with strong emotional intelligence, who is keen to learn and adapt best practices from top-performing organizations globally. Someone with experience in management consulting or high growth startups would be especially well-suited for this role.

A great launch pad for a high achiever eager to step into an executive leadership role in the future, this position offers significant exposure and personal growth opportunities, including interaction with Educate!’s network of world-class advisors.

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

Enhance CEO Effectiveness

Proactively look for ways to improve and elevate CEO effectiveness. Potential areas of work include:

  • Help CEO identify top priorities, strategically align his time with those, and revisit them regularly to assess progress
  • Support CEO in culture builder role with initiatives that drive culture leadership and modeling 
  • Improving speed and quality of CEO decision-making. 
  • Build tools, frameworks and resources that bring the CEO’s thinking to life within the organization. 
  • Ensure CEO has information he needs when brought into different decision-making processes. 
  • Ensure CEO initiatives get executed to completion by effectively managing schedules and follow-ups.

Manage Key Initiatives

The Chief of Staff will drive key CEO-led initiatives that contribute to org growth and development. Example initiatives include:

  • Build out resources and tools for Educate! to formalize how it supports an ecosystem of values aligned, African-led organizations, including building our prototype Learning Lab. 
  • Advance org adoption of AI practices into daily operations, and partner with Director of Tech on select AI initiatives. 
  • Build org climate change strategy and how it affects cross-cutting aspects of our products and strategy. 

Strategic Org Building with the CEO

Educate!’s CEO loves building systems for effective and culturally aligned scale. The Chief of Staff will partner with him and key functional leaders to accelerate the build of those systems and collaborate with key functions (People, Finance) to support their implementation. Key areas you will engage with are:

  • Culture and People Systems Build: Partner with Director of People, head of Talent Acquisition and other key leaders to help develop and implement innovative systems that maintain and strengthen Educate!’s distinct culture as we scale. 
  • Finance Systems Build: Collaborate with the CFO and finance leaders to create scalable finance systems that support Educate!’s growth. 
  • Other Initiatives: Work closely with the CEO to identify, prioritize, and implement new initiatives to enhance organizational performance.

Support Org Operating Health

Work with the COO, CEO and others to ensure the operating health of the organization and an effective operating cadence. Areas of focus include:

  • Ensure the core aspects of our strategic plan are communicated consistently and reinforced to the organization. 
  • Leadership team operating rhythm and cohesion
  • Support the execution and improvement of the current operating cadence, including org and division level OKR setting and periodic review, strategic planning, investment committee meetings (Educate!’s version of quarterly business reviews), and experimenting with new structures to improve org wide management. 
  • Help scheduled and organize leadership team gatherings and retreats

Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree and at least 3-7 years of professional experience. Please note we are more focused on finding someone with the right skills and excitement for this role, rather than someone with a set number of years or specific experiences. Consequently, we are open to considering candidates with a wide range of backgrounds and seniority to ensure we find the right fit. 
  • Some experience in management consulting or high growth startups would be an asset but is not required
  • An orientation towards culture and people-first organizations
  • Strong curiosity, open-mindedness, and a desire to learn about the best practices of the highest performing organizations. 
  • Strategic and flexible thinker, data-driven and analytical in approach to solving problems
  • Excels at building authentic relationships and networks; able to build buy-in from multiple stakeholders and influence others to achieve outcomes
  • See this First Round Review article on the Chief of Staff role and different designs of the role. Educate! is looking for the 2nd type - a “mid-career, director-level hire”. Please note our hope is for someone to stay longer than suggested in the article. 
  • Fits our Five Culture Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

Terms 

  • The role is based alongside the CEO in Nairobi, Kenya. Remote with travel could be considered for the right candidate. 
  • Compensation will be competitive and based on experience.
  • Health insurance will be included.
  • The position reports to the CEO. 

Application Process

  • Application deadline will be rolling, with a goal to fill the position ASAP.

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 executive director — 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.