Director, Core Countries

Position title: Director, Core Countries
Contract type / duration: 5-year fixed-term contract
Location: Geneva 
Department: Country Delivery 
Team: Core Countries
Reports To: Chief Country Delivery Officer
N° of positions supervised (if applicable): 9
Career Step: 6

1. About the Role

The Director, Core Countries leads Gavi’s Core Segment of countries, providing strategic direction and system level leadership to introduce new vaccines, strengthen and sustain routine immunisation, prevent backsliding in coverage and mobilise domestic financing.

The role oversees a team comprising one Regional Head and Senior Country Managers, enabling results-oriented country support, navigating complex delivery risks, and ensuring fiduciary, programmatic, and operational performance across a diverse portfolio. The Director combines strategic oversight, political engagement, and leadership influence—shaping partnerships with governments, donors, and Alliance stakeholders while driving outcome focused delivery in high stakes environments.

2. Key Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership for Gavi’s support to strengthen routine immunisation, new vaccine introductions and domestic vaccine financing, setting clear strategic direction and ensuring evidence based decision-making across Core Countries, communicating priorities and expectations with clarity, transparency, and diplomatic influence to governments, Alliance partners, and internal governance bodies. 
• Lead the design and implementation of a differentiated operating model for Core Countries, focused on simplified processes and proportionate performance expectations tailored to the staff ratios, ensuring equitable workload distribution and optimise team capacity and impact.
• Oversee end-to-end planning, forecasting, implementation and performance management of Gavi grants, ensuring rigorous use of Monitoring & Performance Management (MPM) metrics, including timeliness of disbursements and oversight of cash balances, ensuring transparent reporting and communication of performance trends and risks to senior leadership and country stakeholders. 
• Lead high-level political and programmatic engagement with governments, donors, and Alliance partners at national and sub-national levels, strengthening Gavi’s advocacy, influence and ability to resolve bottlenecks that impede programme delivery, managing complex issues with precision, credibility and sensitivity to senior political actors. 
• Coordinate and strengthen Alliance and partner collaboration to build country capacity in planning, coordination and reporting, ensuring coherent roles, aligned expectations, and joint accountability for results, driving consistent and transparent communication across global, regional and country stakeholders to reinforce collective impact. 
• Develop, implement and regularly review country-specific equity, sustainability and transition strategies, ensuring clear pathways to achieve equitable vaccine uptake and long-term programme and financial sustainability, communicating strategic choices and trade-offs clearly to governments and internal leadership. 
• Lead comprehensive political, operational, fiduciary and programmatic risk management across the portfolio, ensuring early detection, mitigation and escalation of risks, providing clear, timely and actionable communication on risk implications to senior leadership, Boards, and Alliance partners. 

3. Your Experience and Skills 
Years and Type of Experience:

• Typically 15 – 20 years of extensive senior experience leading large-scale health or development programmes across multiple countries, ideally in low- and middle-income settings, with accountability for strategy, delivery, and results.
• Proven experience in designing and implementing differentiated country support frameworks, tiered engagement models or country segmentation approaches tailored to diverse capacity contexts, with demonstrated results in at least one African sub-region (EAC, SADCWAEMU and CEMAC).
• Proven experience managing complex grant or investment portfolios, including programme planning, implementation oversight, performance tracking, renewals, disbursements, and course correction where results are off track.
• Demonstrated track record of senior level engagement across multiple African countries, (where Gavi has the largest investments), with additional experience in Asia being desirable. Proven ability to navigate diverse government structures and partnership dynamics while tailoring approaches to local contexts.
• Strong track record of working in multi-partner and matrixed environments, coordinating across technical teams, country stakeholders, donors, and implementing partners to align priorities and drive execution.
• Demonstrated experience managing programmatic and fiduciary risk in complex settings, including identifying issues early, strengthening controls, escalating concerns appropriately, and supporting practical mitigation actions.
• Demonstrated relationships with African Union bodies, Africa CDC, regional economic communities or continental health initiatives, experience in leveraging South-South cooperation and peer learning networks
• Typically 8 years experience leading senior teams and representing the organisation externally at high level, including engagement with governments, alliance partners, and senior internal governance forums on politically sensitive or operationally complex issues.

Education and Qualifications:

• Essential: Advanced university degree (Master’ level) in Public Health, Social Sciences, Health Economics or related field.

Technical and Functional Skills:
Must have:

• Programme and portfolio management — Expertise in leading end-to-end oversight of a large, complex country portfolio, from planning and prioritisation through implementation, review, renewal, and performance management.
• Results-based management and performance monitoring — Able to define success measures, interpret performance data, track KPIs, identify underperformance early, and drive corrective action to improve programme outcomes.
• Risk management and assurance — (Advanced) Strong command of programmatic and fiduciary risk assessment, mitigation planning, control oversight, and escalation in grant- or investment-funded environments.
• Grant / investment management — Advanced ability to oversee funding decisions, implementation conditions, partner accountability, disbursement logic, and the operational processes needed to manage investments effectively.
• Strategic analysis and evidence-based decision-making — Strong ability to use country context, programme evidence, operational data, and partner input to shape strategy, prioritise support, and make sound business decisions in complex environments.
• Stakeholder and partnership management — Exceptional at building productive working relationships with governments, multilateral partners, donors, and internal cross-functional teams, and to influence without direct authority in a matrix structure.

Good to Have:

• Humanitarian and fragile-context programme delivery — Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in humanitarian, fragile, or post-conflict environments by adapting programme delivery approaches to unstable contexts, managing elevated operational and security risks, and ensuring continuity of programme implementation despite uncertainty and disruption.
• Global health partnership and donor ecosystem navigation — Strong understanding of global health financing and partnership platforms, including the governance structures, funding cycles, and mandates of organisations such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Bank, and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, with the ability to position programmes effectively and collaborate within complex, multi-stakeholder delivery ecosystems. 

Languages Needed:
•    Required: Fluency in English (written and spoken).
•    Preferred: Fluency in French and Portuguese will be an added advantage.

4. How You Work (Behaviours and Mindsets)

• Strategic leadership and influence — Operates with strategic vision and inspires high performance, including the ability to influence outcomes and shape direction in environments where formal authority or leverage may be limited.
• Complexity navigation and sound judgement — Demonstrates confidence and adaptability when working in politically sensitive or high-risk environments, exercising strong judgement to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and competing stakeholder interests.
• Stakeholder engagement and alliance building — Builds trust-based relationships with diverse stakeholders at senior levels, with a proven ability to develop productive partnerships, influence decision-making, and sustain collaboration across complex stakeholder ecosystems.
• Cross-functional collaboration and alignment — Champions collaboration across teams, functions, and partners, fostering alignment and shared ownership to drive coordinated delivery in matrix and multi-partner environments.
• Diplomatic communication and leadership presence — Communicates clearly and persuasively with varied audiences while demonstrating diplomacy, discretion, political awareness, and the empathy and resilience required to lead effectively under pressure.
• Continental strategic design & contextual judgement — Designs approaches from a continental perspective as opposed to applying global best practices top-down; confidently challenges central policies when they risk undermining local effectiveness.

5. Your Leadership 

• One Gavi Mindset: Thinks and acts with Gavi and the Alliance best interest in mind, role models values and behaviours, fosters shared accountability, promotes and exhibits strong collaboration within and across departments. Champions Gavi’s mission while fiercely protecting space for country specific approaches, builds sufficient credibility with the Gavi Secretariat to advocate effectively for differentiated treatment of Core Countries when standardisation threatens effectiveness
• Agile Leadership: Adapts quickly to shifting contexts, guides teams through uncertainty, and drives decisions that balance long-term strategy with short-term responsiveness. Leading effectively within a resource constrained environment, when hard trade-offs between countries are required, or when maintaining team morale through budget austerity
• Strategic-Pragmatic: Balances long-term vision with operational realities, translating strategy into clear, outcome-driven actions, demonstrating strategic leadership and successful delivery in matrix management environments.
• Influence and Drive Change: Builds alignment and commitment among diverse stakeholders, driving progress through diplomacy, credibility, and shared purpose.
• Talent Development: Grows talent with an organisation-wide perspective, cultivates high-performing teams by setting clear expectations, providing regular feedback, and mentoring talent to thrive in a dynamic, mission-driven environment.