Manager – Consulting Team
Pula is seeking an experienced manager to lead and execute consulting and research projects and support the Consulting Director in building partnerships. She/he must have a love for probing into data, solving challenging problems, and structuring complex processes as well as a hunger for building partnerships across private sector, public sector, and nonprofits. She/he would love this role if they are motivated to help millions of farmers with climate change adaptation!
She/he is expected to independently lead consulting engagements, with guidance from the Consulting Director, that leverage our trove of existing relationships, products, data and leverage the potential of new technologies, including remote sensing and carbon credits, with the goal of delivering tangible new consulting revenue and long term new commercial opportunities. Tasks will range from liaising with new research and corporate and philanthropic clients, to working with management and tech teams to ensure smooth delivery of research and insights, to visiting the field to understand the on-the-ground perspective, to synthesizing learnings from the business and clients, to contributing to the creation of new value-additive products for farmers, agribusiness, insurers, governments, mobile operators and their agent networks.
The Manager – will report to the Consulting Director – and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.
What you’ll be doing
Independently engage in consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Be involved in the whole consulting cycle from identifying new opportunities, working with the commercial team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing small teams put together for specific consulting assignments. The nature of projects can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.
Create new content and insights as part of our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working as part of a lean team to deliver on the contracted deliverables. You will be expected to deliver on discrete data analysis and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
Along with the Director, you will be expected to identify new commercial opportunities in new and existing markets, supporting market sizing for feasibility studies in new countries and ensuring that our commercial team has a steady supply of opportunities.
You will be expected to develop content for Pula’s external communication and messaging through editorials, newsletters and webinars, publicizing the research work as well as wider work the company, coordinating with different departments in the business.
What you need to have to be successful
The hard skills:
You have the analytical skills and the structured thinking to close action-oriented research and consulting projects as per committed timelines. At least 2-3 years of experience in management consulting.
You can demonstrate to have originated and delivered on consulting work from development agencies and/or institutional donors for a value of at least $50,000 over the course of your career.
You have experience working with Development Agencies at multiple levels and navigating institutional structures both in private foundations and development agencies.
Consulting experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Financial Inclusion, Agriculture or related is a significant advantage.
Networks, Experience and knowledge in the Climate Finance and Carbon Credit Industry will place you at an advantage.
You are fully comfortable with Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.
The soft skills:
Relationships: 20%
Can build trust-worthy relationships with internal teams and with external stakeholders rapidly. Can follow up on leads from the Consulting Director and also expand into new networks quickly and by themselves. Passionate about building and maintaining relationships
Resilient & Analytical: 30%
Can navigate through lots of data sets and stakeholders to get the right information needed for consulting assignments as well as for closing deals and will not give up. Preferably a tenacious self-starter who enjoys being given ownership of initiatives. Recovers quickly from tough situations. Eager to build new partnerships, has a point to prove and looks to prove that point at Pula. Builds their profile and therefore reputation around Pula and the Pula products. They do not want to fail and therefore will do what it takes for Pula to succeed.
Coachable: 20%
Is eager to learn, and grow in their skills and ability, and can adapt to the situation. Is resourceful to close any skills and knowledge gap. Openly receives and shares feedback. A consummate learner.
Gravitas yet Street Smart 10%
Is charming and has a confident, comfortable presence. Can sit across from diplomats to Ministers of Agriculture and hold their own and pitch without assistance. Can understand and map the stakeholders in a new partnership, identify and test champions, structure the partnership, problem solve and find another way when a proposed partnership gets stuck.
Communication: 20%
Can confidently convert information internally and externally adjusting quickly between written and verbal communication as situations call for it. Follows through on action points from conversations and can succinctly summarize the progress required to progress a partnership.
What Pula will bring to the table
Growth potential:
With an untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide, on track to doubling the number of farmers insured in 2021 and Pula’s global leadership in Agriculture Insurance, our new staffers have a tremendous upside growth potential.
Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed a $6m series A funding in December 2020 in the right in the middle of the pandemic a clear testimony of the opportunity that Pula is going after.
Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, reporting to the CEO and Co-Founder, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside
To apply for this job please visit boards.eu.greenhouse.io.