Senior Associate, Country Support - Mental Health

Clinton Health Access Initiative•or CHAI Program Country,

33d

About The Position

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low- and middle-income countries. CHAI works with governments and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems. Founded in 2002, CHAI has expanded its focus from HIV/AIDS to include infectious diseases like COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, as well as non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. The organization also works to accelerate vaccine rollouts, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. CHAI invests in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing, with a strategy grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring government leadership, national scalability, and global knowledge sharing. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, recognizing that its mission is best advanced by people with diverse experiences, backgrounds, and cultures. The Mental Health program, part of CHAI's Innovation cluster, aims to expand access to affordable, quality-assured psychotropic medicines in sub-Saharan Africa through the Mental Health Access Initiative (MHAI). Despite the significant burden of severe mental health conditions, over 90 percent of people with psychosis in LMICs receive inadequate care. MHAI addresses barriers to medicine access, including product availability, registration, financing, procurement, supply chain, pricing, and prescribing. The program is active in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa, and is expanding to six focus countries, including Ghana. This role may also support the wider mental health portfolio beyond MHAI's specific focus countries and countries. The program is delivered jointly by CHAI country teams and a global team, in close collaboration with CHAI's Global Markets Team.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of relevant professional experience.
Demonstrated ability to build trusted working relationships with colleagues and external stakeholders.
Strong analytical skills, including the ability to structure an ambiguous problem, build and interpret quantitative and qualitative analyses, and draw out what matters.
Demonstrated ability to learn quickly, connect the dots, and translate technical knowledge into actionable insight for decision-makers.
Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to produce clear, compelling slides for both internal and external audiences.
Ability to work independently, set priorities and manage multiple workstreams in a decentralized, multicultural environment.
Experience in capacity building, mentorship, and working with remote or decentralized teams.
Comfort moving between hands-on delivery support and senior external engagement, with no task considered too small.
Exceptional attention to detail.
Willingness and ability to travel 20-40%, including to settings where travel logistics can be demanding.
English language fluency, both written and verbal.

Nice To Haves

Experience working within a CHAI country team, or within a country-based team at a comparable organization.
Experience in a resource-constrained, high-autonomy environment where roles are not narrowly defined.
Familiarity with pharmaceutical access, regulatory, procurement, supply chain or health financing in LMICs.
Experience working with Ministries of Health or other government partners.
Experience supporting donor reporting and funder engagement.
Master's degree in public health, public policy, business, economics or a related field.
French language proficiency.
Interest in, or exposure to, mental health.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary day-to-day point of contact between CHAI’s global mental health team and country teams across the focus countries.
Provide hands-on, timely support and feedback to country teams on objective and key result tracking, work planning, analysis, materials preparation, fundraising activities, and delivery against program milestones and the program’s monitoring and evaluation framework.
Travel regularly to focus countries to work alongside country teams, including during workshops, government engagements and periods of peak delivery.
Develop a working understanding of the programmatic, political and operational constraints each country team faces, and be able to articulate them accurately to others.
Build and maintain relationships with in-country stakeholders, including Ministries of Health and procurement agencies, alongside the country teams who hold those relationships primarily.
Identify where additional resources are needed and mobilize to fill the gap.
Communicate effectively across a matrixed, international organization, streamlining.
Synthesize country progress, insight, and evidence into materials for funders, partners, the public, and CHAI leadership, representing country realities accurately.
Articulate, internally and externally, how in-country work connects to program-level strategy, funder commitments and decisions being taken globally.
Prepare program updates, presentations, and briefing materials for internal and external audiences.
Support annual and quarterly planning cycles with country teams, including objective setting and milestone definition.
Track progress against country work plans, objectives, and key results; flag risks to delivery early and propose mitigations.
Coordinate across CHAI global teams and external partners to align workstreams and avoid duplication.
Support grant management and reporting requirements in coordination with program leadership.
Foster a strong team culture based on CHAI's values, contributing to a cohesive and productive matrixed team across the country and global teams.
Capture lessons learned and best practices, and facilitate cross-country and cross-program exchange through briefs, convenings and regular calls, including dissemination to external audiences where appropriate.
Adapt country-specific tools, templates, and approaches into resources other teams can use.
Other responsibilities as needed.