Senior Program Assistant, Family Planning

The Foundation is 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: In 2020, the Gates Foundation announced the creation of a new division, Gender Equality (GE), driven by our determined leadership and partnership to accelerate progress for women and girls globally. This role is a part of the Gender Equality Division’s Family Planning (FP) team, which works to bring access to high-quality contraceptive information, services, and supplies to women and girls in the world’s poorest countries. The FP team’s work spans the spectrum from innovation, advocacy, and data, to supporting delivery and scale in localized and global contexts.

Your Role: You provide senior administrative and organizational support for leaders of teams. You coordinate the planning and allocation of leader’s time and work to deliver the day-to-day objectives and coordination of administrative initiatives and projects. You have broad knowledge of foundation procedures, policies, and relevant systems to support improvements in team effectiveness.

What You’ll Do:

• Manage complex calendars, including meetings with participants in multiple time zones, both internal and external to the foundation for 4-6 principals.
• Act as a liaison with internal and external partners, grantees, government officials and consultants – with an expectation of working with VIP partners.
• Prioritise communications to ensure prompt responses to inquiries.
• Provide high-quality interactions, clear and consistent communication internally as well as grantees and partners in the field.
• Manage competing priorities through transparency, collaboration, and rigor.
• Coordinate daily workflow and project progress, ensuring clear roles and responsibilities; ensures tasks and deliverables are being met and follows up on action items.
• Manage logistics, scheduling and planning of events including coordinating arrangements for participants, handling coordination, and disseminating materials for high level events as needed.
• Provide operational support, including, but not limited to, knowledge management, maintaining an organized virtual filing system, and capturing action items from key meetings/convenings.
• Record and data management including, but not limited to, management of the team Microsoft Teams pages, SharePoint site, maintaining an organized filing system, tracking, and prioritising tasks and projects.
• Work on special projects as needed, which may include conducting basic project management and/or research and analysis of data to respond to requests.
• Play a key role in team culture and help to design team effectiveness moments for team building and celebration.
• Be an active member of the Family Planning team and the Business Team – participating in team meetings, team events, and keeping a pulse on the health and effectiveness of the team.
• Balance quality of work with meeting deadlines while making the best use of available time and resources.
• Respond positively to change, embracing and using new practices to accomplish goals and solve problems.
• Perform tasks with care; be thorough, making few if any errors and checking work to ensure accuracy and completeness.
• Handle high workloads, competing demands, vague assignments, interruptions, and distractions with poise and ease.
• Encourage team unity through sharing information or expertise, working together to solve problems, and putting team success first.

Your Experience:

• Demonstrated experience in an administrative role for a complex and fast-paced organization.
• Highly proactive in identifying team needs and opportunities and helps champion and resolve them.
• Experience setting priorities and meeting deadlines while balancing the needs of providing support for multiple individuals, including calendar management, travel arrangements; and event planning assistance.
• Experience working within organizational systems to improve efficiency and successfully working in a changing environment.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills; must be able to communicate effectively with internal and external contacts and can adjust to a wide variety of working styles.
• Proficient with MS Office Suite including – Outlook, SharePoint, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Teams.

*Must be able to legally work in the United Kingdom without visa sponsorship.

Hiring Requirements: As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations: If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement: We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices. All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.