Senior Program Officer, Nutrition Advocacy

Gates Foundation•Seattle, WA

18h

About The Position

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 mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation's work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation's objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation's resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage diverse partners and promote innovative solutions that advance our program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs, and Foundation Communications to build an environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives. The Program Advocacy and Communications (PAC) team works in partnership with program teams, regional offices, and other teams in GPA to achieve their policy and finance goals by: Developing and coordinating the execution of advocacy and communications strategies. Developing, when required, resource mobilization strategies in collaboration with relevant teams. Bringing to bear leadership and foundation voice to implement advocacy strategies. Developing and handling a grant portfolio dedicated to achieving advocacy outcomes. Directly advocating with sector leaders, influencers, media, and government officials in order to achieve advocacy outcomes. Leading issue-specific communications in service of advocacy goals. Developing policy recommendations or proposals in partnership with programmatic and regional offices. This position is a limited-term position for 9 months. Relocation will not be provided. To be considered for this role, please apply by April 29, 2026 at 5:00pm PST. Your Role The Interim Senior Program Officer (SPO) will be responsible for implementing advocacy and communications strategies to advance the policy, financing, and leverage goals of the foundation’s Nutrition programs. The foundation’s nutrition work is included in three Program Strategy Teams (PSTs): Large-Scale Food Fortification, Nutrition Food Systems (within the Agricultural Development team); and the Maternal, Newborn, and Child Nutrition and Health team. Across these three portfolios, we aim to strengthen policies and secure the financing partnerships that are critical to unlock greater investment in upstream R&D as well as program delivery and scaling. This LTE assignment will prioritize a number of financing initiatives. In particular, we are undertaking an effort to secure diversified sources of financing across the large-scale food fortification value chain globally, including donor funding, private and philanthropic capital, corporate investment, development finance, and domestic resources. Working with our wider Global Policy and Advocacy colleagues across different markets and regions, this individual will identify opportunities across the LSFF value chain (e.g. inputs like premix; offsetting food processing costs; funding for government oversight and compliance; incentives for processors on compliance with standards) that will ultimately enable fortification programs to scale more quickly and serve more consumers. In addition, this individual will support the foundation’s work in support of the Child Nutrition Fund—a financing mechanism hosted by UNICEF to help countries scale domestic nutrition programs, with a strong emphasis on nutrition commodities (like ready-to-use therapeutic food and multiple micronutrient supplements, or MMS). This individual will also work with key internal program partners to scope and advance future opportunities for nutrition advocacy, including for our microbiome nutrition portfolio and work we are undertaking to strengthen nutrition and vaccine integration. In service of the above objectives, this individual will manage several grants and represent that foundation in key partnership opportunities.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in public policy, international relations, nutrition, or a related field with 7+ years of progressive senior-level experience leading advocacy initiatives in nutrition or health and development issues.
Deep understanding of the role of advocacy and communications efforts to increase awareness of global development issues and shape political and financial support for these issues with governmental and non-state organizations.
Ability to engage with and deep understanding of private sector markets in LMICs, particularly related to financing for support to medium and large enterprises in the food and nutrition sectors.
Experience working on agriculture, health and/or nutrition policy and financing and understanding of global donor landscape.
Experience working on advocacy with global donors and multilateral institutions including interaction with senior-level policy makers, civil society organizations, coalitions, and governments.
Understanding of key global and regional development financial institutions and mechanisms including how they prioritize and fund development programs at national and regional level.
Proven track record of providing vision and influencing others in a constructive, optimistic manner, while building and sustaining collaborative relationships.
Outstanding project and leadership skills including the ability to lead strategy development through execution, develop shared goals and execution plans, prioritize, facilitate meetings, run budgets, develop consensus, and work both autonomously and collaboratively.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to effectively synthesize information to reach diverse audiences and build consensus, ideal.
Experience handling a grant's portfolio either as a grantee, receiving and reporting on a grant, or as a grant manager, with direct responsibility for grant-making and management.
Experience developing and managing complex projects and/or grants in support of policy initiatives, advocacy programs, and events at the global, regional, and national levels.
Strong initiative, organizational skills, and ability to work autonomously and cross-functionally while remaining flexible to changing tasks, priorities, and roles and responsibilities
Willingness to travel up to 30% of the time.
Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located. The Foundation does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. This includes direct company sponsorship and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (eg: H-1B, O-1, L-1, E, OPT, STEM-OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.).

Responsibilities

Support the implementation of the foundation’s nutrition advocacy strategy, with a focus on global donor advocacy, philanthropic collaboration, development finance institutions, and domestic budget advocacy in focus countries.
Work individually and with other program officers to manage a portfolio of investments of nutrition advocacy partners in donor markets and LMICs, including oversight of portfolio budget and all related grant-making processes (e.g., investment reviews, strategic alignment, grantee engagement, etc.).
Lead high-impact and complex partnerships, coalitions, and advocacy campaigns including effectively coordinating networks of grantees.
Analyze incentives for increased public and private investment in LMICs in the food processing value chain.
Provide in-depth advocacy and communications counsel and support to key grantees and partners.
In partnership with GPA and Regional Office team colleagues, maintain and manage relationships with critical donor and emerging economy governments, sector stakeholders, normative and research agencies, and multilateral institutions on nutrition financing and development issues.
Represent the foundation and our strategies to external constituencies. This could include formal and informal presentations such as making speeches, attending conferences, committee representation, and other meetings. May serve on boards and working groups.
Write and produce clear, concise, and insightful briefings, messaging, reports, email updates, and other materials on key agriculture topics and relevant issues for foundation leadership.
Participate in and learn from the foundation's Diversity, Equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts to ensure that we are continuing to make progress toward realizing our commitments.
Participate in Nutrition and cross-GPA team efforts to enhance our integration, accelerate impact, and maintain a cohesive and dynamic culture.