Executive Director, CARE-WWF Alliance

Overview

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the world's leading environment organizations, seeks an Executive Director, WWF-CARE Alliance. The preferred location is Washington, DC but we will consider other locations.

Overview

More than ten years ago, CARE and WWF formed an Alliance based on the recognition that environmental degradation and poverty cannot be successfully addressed in isolation. Inequality, climate change, and biodiversity loss are defining, related challenges for humanity that demand collective response. Even as human needs crowd out nature, degraded ecosystems undermine food and nutrition security. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement, and global biodiversity targets, the needs of vulnerable people who live in and depend on landscapes, seascapes, and watersheds must be integrated with biodiversity conservation. In addition, the scale, and the urgency of COVID-19, caused by an unsustainable relationship between people and nature, requires increased effort applied to these interrelated challenges.

Our Alliance has embraced objectives of climate-smart biodiversity conservation and gender-responsive socioeconomic development through a decade of work across three countries and two continents and is thus well positioned to convene dialogue and drive solutions at this nexus. As the world looks toward setting sustainable development, climate, and biodiversity targets for 2030, the Alliance can bring a decade of experience to these dialogues, starting with a focus on the UN Food Systems Summit process in which both WWF and CARE have leading roles.

We are currently seeking an Executive Director to help support the collaboration between the two organizations and further our shared missions for conservation of nature and alleviation of poverty.

Major Functions

The Executive Director (ED) of the Alliance will be responsible for refreshing the strategic vision for the Alliance and working with a small working group drawn from both organizations to develop and implement a rolling two- to three-year plan to realize that vision. The role will require strategic leadership to develop and promote our joint programmatic agenda in a way that influences thinking, policy, and practice both across our respective networks and with external partners (e.g., civil society, private sector, and government). The ED will work closely with program leadership in both organizations to ensure that knowledge, evidence, and lessons learned from our joint programs and from our respective organizational strengths are captured and communicated to facilitate adoption and integration into each organization's work beyond our shared efforts. Importantly, a key part of the ED's role will be to work with program and technical leaders to identify innovative and groundbreaking concepts and models that will appeal to donors interested in conservation and development outcomes and to partner with the fundraising teams at both organizations to raise new financial support for the work of the Alliance.

The ED will report to the Chief Operating Officer of WWF with a dotted-line reporting relationship to the Vice President of Program Strategy & Impact at CARE.

Responsibilities

• Refine strategic priorities and goals to enhance the overall mission of the Alliance.
  • Maintain a deep understanding of the areas where WWF and CARE work across the globe to best leverage the assets of both organizations.
  • Display a strong sense of knowledge and passion for conservation and sustainable development including, but not limited to, food and nutrition security and ecosystem stability.
  • Display a knowledge of and commitment to fighting poverty and social injustice, including gender equity issues.
  • Exhibit strong technical skills that allow for efficient project management.
• Ensure coordination and alignment of priorities within and across organizations.
  • Facilitate the connection between WWF and CARE networks in an innovative way that allows for effective, long-term knowledge exchange and continued support for increased collaboration.
  • Share and promote learning and impacts from the Alliance internally across both international networks.
  • Maintain and encourage relationships with senior management in both organizations to explore ways to further the Alliance's mission.
• Build upon existing programmatic partnerships and create new ones to deepen the impact of the Alliance's efforts.
  • Work alongside communications and policy teams to influence public policy and external communities of practice.
  • Maintain relationships with high profile institutional and individual partners in private and public sectors, initially focusing on the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit as well as other global fora.
• Support fundraising efforts to continue to fund and strength Alliance projects.
  • In cooperation with WWF and CARE fundraising teams, identify and engage with new funding partners.
  • Look for additional opportunities with donors to continue projects in the areas where we work and to expand to additional countries.
• Manage the implementation of Alliance grants.
  • Ensure workplans, timelines, deliverables, outputs, and outcomes are met.
  • Collaborate with staff who are partially funded by the grants to align with Alliance deliverables and activities.
  • Support and align with each organizations' leaders in their Alliance roles.
• Undertake special initiatives and perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned.