IBAT Biodiversity and Business Lead

We are hiring a Biodiversity and Business Lead.

About the role

The Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) is the product of the IBAT Alliance - a ground-breaking collaboration between four of the world’s most influential conservation organisations: BirdLife International, Conservation International, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). The IBAT Secretariat is drawn from across the IBAT Alliance partner organisations. Headquartered in the David Attenborough Building in central Cambridge, we support IBAT’s growing community of 30,000+ users around the world, as they use IBAT to integrate biodiversity into their decision making. IBAT is undergoing a significant period of transformation to enhance its ability to channel increasing investment into the datasets and align its product with core business needs.

Overall responsibility

The Biodiversity and Business Lead is the senior expert within IBAT on the application of biodiversity, nature and conservation science to business practice. This is a key strategic role, driving the integration of scientific rigour into a rapidly evolving product designed to support corporate users to identify and act on their business’ interface with biodiversity.

Specific duties and responsibilities

• Use their strategic understanding of the business and biodiversity landscape to be a senior contributor towards IBAT’s strategic product direction.
• Develop and review robust methodologies relevant to IBAT products to service growing corporate needs for nature related metrics and tools.
• Manage the pipeline of investment made by IBAT into scientific developments to directly contribute towards IBAT’s strategic product direction.
• Lead IBAT’s positioning with respect to the current and future evolution of key regulatory frameworks (e.g. TNFD, CSRD, NPI, SBTN), including through engagement with those standard setters as appropriate.
• Guide the marketing, sales and customer success team to communicate the underlying scientific logic of the product to users.
• Guide IBAT’s customer facing team’s engagement with users, including corporates and financial institutions, in the application of biodiversity data.
• Work closely with the IBAT technical team and support user testing to develop, test and refine products.
• Interface with Alliance Partners to progress IBAT’s product development, balancing scientific best practice with commercial viability and market appetite.
• Play a key role in ensuring that IBAT’s investment in scientific research support is managed to contribute to strategic product direction.
• Represent and promote IBAT on a global stage – at webinars and in person events.
• Support IBAT’s engagement with key collaborators to strengthen IBAT’s strategic partnerships.
• Represent IBAT on technical working groups, particularly relating to the evolution of frameworks and standards.

Capacity building, knowledge generation and communication

• Build the capacity of the IBAT team, particularly junior professionals, on business and biodiversity topics.
• Develop and review content on biodiversity and business topics for a range of uses.
• Develop industry guidance, briefing notes and supporting materials on the application of biodiversity data for positive nature outcomes through business.

IBAT team leadership

• Lead the IBAT Secretariat when the IBAT Managing Director is not in post.
• People manage the Product Team, working productively with the Product Manager.
• Be a key contributor to IBAT’s Senior Leadership team.
• Coordinate cross function initiatives that benefit from this role’s business and biodiversity expertise.

REQUIREMENTS

• Master’s degree in a relevant field required.
• Strong grounding in biodiversity, conservation, sustainable development and social science concepts and theory and its application to business.
• Minimum 8-10 years of professional experience in a biodiversity related role.
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of how businesses use biodiversity data to drive decisions.
• Technical understanding on the fast-evolving topic of state of nature metrics and associated tools.
• Robust understanding of key biodiversity-related datasets.
• An experienced people manager.
• Experience in communicating effectively with both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• Ability to take initiative, exercise good judgment, and convene stakeholders effectively.
• Skilfully prioritizes, manages, and balances operational task flows.
• Interest in getting experience in translating business problems and science into the development of a tech product.
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills in English.
• Desired proficiency in written and spoken French and/or Spanish.
• Desired understanding of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and other relevant databases.
• Desired experience representing organisations at high level events.