Senior Program Officer Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Experience: 5 to 10 Years Beijing, China Apply By: 16-01-2025

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The Global Growth and Opportunity (GGO) division focuses on creating and scaling market-based innovations to stimulate inclusive and sustainable economic growth. We seek to catalyze sustainable transformative change in the face of inequities and market failures, to realize the potential of untapped markets, and to see the economic and social benefits of including everyone. Core areas are Agricultural Development; Digital Public Infrastructure; Global Education; Inclusive Financial Systems; Nutrition; and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene. We seek solutions that are sustainable, transformative, and inclusive with an eye toward applying technology innovations as well as data evidence to inspire change in the world’s developing countries.

The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WSH) team’s vision is to enable widespread use of safely managed, sustainable sanitation services, contributing to positive health, economic, and gender equality outcomes for the world’s poorest. Unsafe sanitation is a massive problem that is becoming more urgent as our global population increases and trends like water scarcity and urbanization intensify. About 3.6 billion people—almost half the world’s population—either practice open defecation or use unsafe sanitation facilities and services. 

The focus of the team’s strategy is on developing and commercializing transformative sanitation technologies, in particular the Reinvented Toilet (an innovation that does not require a connection to a water pipe or a sewer line and kills all of the pathogens in human waste). We collaborate with technologists, the private sector and government officials to advance these transformative technologies that have high potential to improve sanitation conditions for underserved communities in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Your Role

We are looking for a driven Senior Program Officer, Reinvented Toilets for Market and Industry Development, to lead the WSH program’s efforts to launch a brand-new Reinvented Toilet industry, with an emphasis in China.

• Your focus will be to streamline regulations, certification, and permitting processes that open new market segments of early adopters; understand the needs of potential customers (e.g. users, service providers and other buyers) of Reinvented Toilets (i.e., sanitation systems conforming to ISO 30500); and orchestrate the market architecture required to deploy these technologies in launch markets.
• You will be partnering and collaborating directly with commercial partners (i.e., those manufacturing, distributing, or servicing the Reinvented Toilets), financiers, government regulators and policy makers, development partners, and foundation colleagues, to build market structures that will accelerate the growth of a brand-new sanitation industry. You will coordinate the China strategy execution with colleagues leading the global industry development efforts and commercial partners recruitment/management, leveraging a common framework for strategy formulation and strategy execution.
• The charitable goals of our program depend on the development of this new industry and on these new markets being sustainably profitable for our commercial partners. The imperative for growing these markets comes from the urgency of reducing the rates of death and disease, in these regions, due to poor sanitation. Your success in this role will contribute to saving and improving many millions of lives.
• The ideal candidate should be confident working with business executives and senior local and national government officials, promoting adoption of new policies, regulations, and technologies. The role will be critical in analyzing the market landscape; understanding and influencing emerging policies, regulations, and procurement trends; designing go-to-market strategies; and identifying bottlenecks / barriers that inhibit customer adoption of innovative sanitation technologies or inhibit climate resilient sanitation service provision, especially for communities living in informal settlements affected by climate change. We are also looking for candidates who will have been intimately involved in driving regulatory and permitting processes to successfully launch a new product category or launch a significant innovation into one or more emerging markets, giving them experience relevant to the challenges listed above.
• This is a limited-term position (LTE) for 24 months, based at the CCO’s office in Beijing. Relocation will not be provided.
• The postholder will report to the China Country Office Deputy Director for Agricultural Development & WSH, with a dotted line to the WSH Deputy Director for Regulatory Affairs and Market Development based in Seattle. You will regularly consult with your peers, the global leads for research and development (R&D), and industry liaisons and technology transition.

What You’ll Do

• Work with industry partners to design and execute go-to-market structures and strategies that enable the development of reinvented toilets and the non-sewered sanitation industry in China.
• Identify funding opportunities and collaborate with partners to deliver on goals set by the WSH program in collaboration with the CCO.
• Provide strategic insight on market dynamics and segmentation (including sizing, trends, and likelihood to be early adopters) to WSH leadership, and to commercial and business partners.
• Coordinate with business partners and governments on approaches and processes to influence policies, standards, and regulations – as well as taxes and other financial drivers to promote adoption and successful commercialization of sanitation innovation and climate resilient service delivery.
• Lead market and pricing studies, and value proposition analysis; lead insightful research to bring the voice of the customers to commercial partners and technology developers.
• Partner with commercial/industry partners and governments for products’ roll-outs and launch reference projects demonstrating inclusive and climate resilient service delivery in early adopter market segments.
• Identify and document incentives and disincentives specific to each early adopter market as well as other barriers to market development, and propose strategies and mechanisms to accelerate adoption and commercialization of innovative sanitation solutions.
• Advise commercial partners on their own go-to-market plans for these markets.
• Drive strategy, program planning, and execution in coordination with cross functional partners and stakeholders.
• Hire and manage a multi-national team of consultants, as appropriate, to lead industry development activities in their respective markets.
• Coordinate country execution plans with other WSH colleagues.
• Other duties as assigned.

Your Experience

• Master’s or other advanced degree in a related field (e.g. business administration, project management, engineering).
• Minimum of 10 years’ experience in go-to-market strategy and/or product marketing experience, ideally related to onsite sanitation solutions.
• Must have experience in product launch in China, especially with regulatory processes, permitting, and compliance to norms and standards.
• In-depth experience in successfully launching a new product category or significant innovation into one or more emerging markets.
• Leadership abilities to work with multiple partners, including government, manufacturers, innovators, academic/research institutions, donors, among other, to create a common vision and shared goals to achieve solutions to complex problems.
• Strong analytical skills, including structuring analyses and supporting investment case evaluations.
• Agile systems thinker with strong command in strategy formulation and execution. Experience managing grants/contracts and overseeing program/project budgets also strongly preferred.
• Project management capabilities; from workplan concept development, through implementation, and impact measurement, with strong organizational and prioritization skills. Experience developing and managing projects in a matrix team environment is a plus.
• Proven ability to deliver results in large and complex organizations.
• Excellent team player with ability to work collaboratively across functions.
• Creative problem solver with a tenacious focus on business goals. Tolerance for ambiguity and ability to apply structure to simplify complex problems.
• Confident and comfortable working with senior leaders and cross-functional partners to drive alignment and execution.
• Data driven, customer focused, curious, and willing to span from strategy to detailed execution.
• Comfortable with role ambiguity and working in a fast-paced, complex and matrixed environment.
• Effective communicator who can passionately articulate a vision, calibrate input and synthesize information to connect with diverse audiences, and inspire collaboration.
• Strong listening, verbal, and written communications skills in Chinese and English languages required.

Source: https://gatesfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Gates/job/Beijing-China/Senior-Program-Officer–Reinvented-Toilets-for-Market-and-Industry-Development–24-month-LTE-_B020694-1