Director of Programs - Palestine

Position Description

Location Ramallah, Palestine (or Amman)

Position Status: Full Time 

Risk Level:     ☐ Level 3       ☐Level 2          ☐Level 1 

(Level 3: Frequent contact with participants, direct contact with children, access to sensitive data, and/or high level of accountability.  

Level 2: Some contact with participants; unplanned non-direct contact with children.

Level 1: Likely to have no contact with participants or sensitive data) 

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

Program Summary

Mercy Corps has operated in Palestine for nearly four decades across the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, implementing a wide range of humanitarian and development programs. Mercy Corps Palestine’s strategy focuses on supporting Palestinian communities, particularly youth and women, to cope with and adapt to conflict and economic instability. This is achieved by meeting immediate needs, restoring livelihoods, building resilience and expanding opportunities.

Mercy Corps delivers a coordinated, multi-sector emergency response across the Gaza Strip through emergency WASH, cash assistance, and food security and livelihoods support. In addition, Mercy Corps works to create economic opportunities across Palestine, focusing on market systems approaches to strengthen markets in crisis and expanding individual and business opportunities and participation in the tech sector through our flagship program Gaza Sky Geeks.

General Position Summary

Mercy Corps seeks a passionate, team-oriented, strategic leader to manage our diverse program portfolio and teams, support our business development efforts and ensure the integration of our quality, evidence, and learning work for high quality programs in Palestine.

The Director of Programs (DoP) is a resourceful and proven leader who has held senior roles in challenging and volatile contexts, with experience managing a diverse range of complex programs across the Humanitarian-Development-Peacebuilding nexus.  Mercy Corps places a high value on accountability, cross-cutting teamwork, collaborative approaches, and innovative, evidence-driven solutions to development and humanitarian issues while promoting team member growth. As a key Senior Management Team (SMT) member, the DoP is an efficient and adaptive communicator to both internal and external audiences and strives to develop influential and creative partnerships while ensuring accountability to impact delivery, to program participants and to donors. The DoP is committed to bringing all parts of the programs departments together in a holistic manner while ensuring a high level of coordination and coherence across the program portfolio. Overall, the DoP leads and is responsible for the successful implementation of Mercy Corps Palestine’s programmatic strategy and contributes substantially to Mercy Corps’ growth and impact across Palestine while excelling at managing risks in program implementation and changing contexts. 

Essential Job Responsibilities

STRATEGIC VISION & LEADERSHIP 

• Collaboratively develop and communicate a clear vision of present and future program goals and strategies with program team members, and other team members and stakeholders, translating into concrete work plans.

• Lead countrywide program strategy development and prioritize and organize actions and resources to achieve objectives and action plans set through those processes.

• Closely follow analysis of the Palestine socio-political, economic, access, and security context ensuring that this analysis is well incorporated in planning for both short-term humanitarian and longer-term sustainable development and resilience programming.

• Ensure effective communication and collaboration between programs, grants, MEL and support teams ensuring effective implementation of activities across Mercy Corps Palestine programs and strategy.

• Recognize opportunities for innovative actions and create an environment of trust where alternative viewpoints are welcomed.  

PROGRAM LEADERSHIP 

• Work closely with the Palestine Country Director, SMT and other program team members to ensure that Mercy Corps strategy is understood and guides decision-making throughout the country;

• Provide strong and strategic leadership to increase coordination, collaboration, integration, and efficient communication between Mercy Corps programs;

• Contribute to change management whenever required and applicable, and support consensus building around a common vision of what shared success in Palestine looks like, including the development of appropriate key performance indicators;

• Provide clarity around priorities to improve the delivery of assistance in Palestine and to make program strategies and frameworks more consistent across the response;

• Ensure all programs are properly implemented according to Mercy Corps policies and standards, and promote adaptive management across programs to ensure programmatic efforts are responsive to evolving needs based on contextual changes;

• Promote and facilitate sharing and learning across different Mercy Corps portfolios, teams and offices and support teams to incorporate learning in project design and management;

• Oversee the creation and maintenance of systems to ensure efficient program data management to support timely decision-making. 

PROGRAM QUALITY, EVIDENCE & LEARNING

• Contribute and/or support the quality, evidence and learning agenda of Mercy Corps Palestine across all programs and in all related initiatives, including MEL, CARM, GESI and Evidence and Learning.

• Ensure that all Palestine programs meet PM@MC minimum standards and that systems, processes and tools are effectively used by the programs teams; in line with Mercy Corps guidelines and policies;

• Ensure that all programs' staff have received trainings in line with their level of responsibility and receive technical support relevant to their programs;

• Hold program leadership accountable to communities and participants through responding to and acting upon community feedback and concerns raised via Mercy Corps’ Community Accountability Reporting Mechanism (CARM)

• Promote a culture of shared learning across program teams and of evidence-based decision making in line with Mercy Corps organizational strategy and sector wide best practices. 

STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT 

• In coordination with the Country Director and program teams, lead the identification of new initiatives and program opportunities that respond to identified needs and the country strategy as well as new potential donors or funding streams;

• Provide overall leadership and quality control to program team members working on the program development process, including ensuring that all program design processes are evidence-based;

• Support Country Director to cultivate strategic partnerships or relationships with new/existing donors and private sector actors to further strategic development opportunities.

• Lead directly on the development of highly strategic concept notes and proposals as needed;

• Coordinate with partner organizations and field program staff on proposal development and design, to ensure compelling proposals are submitted at all times;

• Support the Reporting and Proposal Development Specialist to ensure that the agency’s best practices in proposal development are consistently applied and clear to all relevant team members. 

TEAM MANAGEMENT

• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual respect and continuous learning where team members strive to achieve excellence;

• Design, implement, and refine remote management tools that enable effective oversight, coordination, and accountability across field teams, ensuring program quality and operational continuity when direct supervision is limited or restricted;

• Ensure the program teams’ structures are fit for purpose and adapt as needed while ensuring that all program departments are well-staffed in a timely manner to prevent any gaps in program leadership and implementation;

• Promote accountability, communicate expectations and provide constructive feedback via regular performance reviews;

• Manage performance of program leaders including establishment of clear and measurable objectives, ongoing feedback, periodic reviews and regular check-ins.

• Contribute to country team-building efforts, facilitate cross departmental cooperation, help team members identify problem-solving options and ensure the integration of all team members into relevant decision-making processes.

• Hire, orient and provide mentorship and capacity building to team members as necessary. 

FINANCE & COMPLIANCE in PROGRAMS

• Recognize the high level of donor scrutiny in Palestine programming and ensure effective, transparent and responsive compliance mechanisms are in place;

• Ensure compliance with all donors’ and Mercy Corps regulations related to all programs;

• Maintain oversight of overall program budgets and support budget holders for individual programs and awards and ensure project expenditure is in line with work plans and commitments to donors, ensuring that all programs are on time, on scope and on target;

• Support the Budget versus Actuals (BVAs) process between Finance and Programs, ensuring all key stakeholders of MC Palestine take part in the meetings and process and that necessary measures are taken and followed through as needed;

• Responsible for programs’ compliance with MC internal policies and donor rules and regulations, including efficient coordination on common program, operational and funding issues. 

INFLUENCE & REPRESENTATION

• Work with formal and informal government structures and representatives, maintain and develop relevant and productive relationships with a wide range of stakeholders;

• Maintain productive relationships with internal and external constituents such as private partners, local NGOs and civil society organizations and academic institutions;

• Anticipate program needs, understand donor pool and contribute to shaping donor views on the evolving context and its impact on civilians in Palestine;

• Explore, evaluate and present innovative funding opportunities that support program objectives;

• Ensures appropriate level of coordination and information sharing about representation and influence is taking place;

• Ensure that Mercy Corps maintain a high degree of risk awareness;

• Respect and understand cultural and ethnic differences and nuances and have the ability to navigate between them, recognizing the complexities involved;

• Identify, build and manage collaborative partnerships with consortium partners, sub-grantees, donors, governments and other stakeholders. 

SECURITY

• Provide support in oversight of access challenges across Palestine to ensure Mercy Corps’ continued ability to access our most vulnerable and hard-to-reach program participants;

• Coordinate with the Palestine Country Director on crucial events, high-risk periods, incident reporting and any security policy changes;

• Ensure compliance with security procedures and policies;

• Proactively ensure that team members operate in a secure environment and are aware of policies. 

SAFEGUARDING RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Actively learns about safeguarding and integrates it into their work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to their area of work.

• Practices the values of Mercy Corps including respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members.

• Encourages openness and communication in their team; encourages team members to submit reports if they have any concerns using reporting mechanisms e.g., Integrity Hotline and other options. 

Supervisory Responsibility

Manages the Gaza Sky Geeks Senior Program Manager and Gaza-based Director of Programs 

Accountability

Reports Directly To: Palestine Country Director

Works Directly With: Country Senior Management Team, Country MEL Manager, Business Development, Awards and Accountability Manager, Gaza-based Director of Operations and Regional Program and Technical Team, with additional regional and global support departments as needed.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.  

Knowledge and Experience

• BA/S or equivalent in relevant field required, MA/S preferred;

• At least seven years of senior-level leadership (Head of Programs or similar) and management experience in large and complex programs including humanitarian operations, previous work experience in the Middle East and insecure environments strongly preferred;

• Good knowledge and experience in one or more of MC outcome areas and technical priorities (water security, food security, economic opportunities, peace and good governance, humanitarian response);

• Proven experience and strong knowledge of rules and regulations of key and donors, notably ECHO, Sida, GAC, and others;

• Robust experience in developing, operationalizing, and implementing program strategies;

• Demonstrated expertise in representation and negotiation resulting in securing significant new opportunities for the organization;

• Experience in leading and developing successful proposals, concept notes, policy papers;

• Demonstrated success working effectively and respectfully with host country government, private sector, INGO, NGO partners and other stakeholders in complex environments;

• Experience leveraging Information Management Systems within development or humanitarian programs to evaluate program outcomes;

• Experience in managing strategic transitions from humanitarian to early recovery, social cohesion programs in a post- conflict transition phase;

• Proven record in guiding the formulation of sectoral strategies in a rapidly evolving contexts;

• Highly-developed interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching;

• Excellent project management skills related to international, cross-functional teams;

• Experience of solving complex issues collegially, defining a clear way forward, and utilizing best practices in management to ensure shared success;

• Outstanding analytical and strategic thinking skills, with a focus on results and impact;

• Excellent oral and written English skills required, proficiency in Arabic preferred. 

Success Factors

The successful candidate is a team oriented, strategic thinker, and experienced leader. They have a thorough understanding of what it takes to deliver impactful programs in challenging environments. They are an excellent communicator, who can inspire broad and diverse teams towards achieving a shared goal and drive a fast-paced and adaptive program. They are able to create a stimulating working environment encouraging innovation and accountability. They are a confident representative in public settings, able to speak up when needed to defend Mercy Corps’ positions and influence key stakeholders internally and externally to further and expand MC Palestine’s goals in the response. They are able to work effectively with an ethnically diverse team in a sensitive environment and prioritize team-building and capacity-building of national staff. They have excellent information management skills and are a strategic thinker. They have an outstanding ability to design, implement and manage innovative programs that respond to current needs and reinforce the future program structure of Mercy Corps in Palestine.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The Director of Programs position is based in Amman, Jordan. This is a non-accompanied position. This position requires travel to the field sites in Mercy Corps Palestine’s operational areas if and as feasible, up to 30% of the time, as security allows. When traveling around the country, strict adherence to Mercy Corps security policies and procedures will be required as well as respect for local cultural norms and traditions. Candidates must be able to work in an environment with periodic energy, transportation and communication challenges.

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development 

 Team Engagement and Effectiveness  

Achieving our mission starts with how we build our team and collaborate. By bringing together individuals with a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, we strengthen our ability to solve complex challenges and drive innovation. We foster a culture of trust and respect, where every team member is valued for their contributions, empowered to reach their full potential, and motivated to do their best work.

We recognize that building a strong and effective team is an ongoing process, and we remain committed to learning, improving, and growing together.

Equal Employment Opportunity 

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected under applicable law.

Safeguarding & Ethics 

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme . We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies  and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

As an applicant, if you witness or experience any form of sexual misconduct during the recruitment process, please report this to Mercy Corps Integrity Hotline (integrityhotline@mercycorps.org).