Job Opportunity for Director of Government Relations at Fortify Health in Mumbai/Bhopal

Fortify Health is a GiveWell-funded NGO with a team of dedicated entrepreneurs working to improve nutritional iron status and reduce iron deficiency anaemia at population scale in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, India. We aim to expand in other states in India in the next three years. We improve nutritional iron status through fortification, a recognised, effective public health intervention that involves the addition of essential micronutrients to staple foods. 

Fortify Health supports millers who are willing to adopt fortification by proactively removing industry barriers, and works with state governments to adopt and expand fortification in social safety net programs (with a focus on the Public Distribution System). Complementing our entrepreneurial model, we provide nutrition training, career development opportunities and a wide range of resources to guide the team.

Position overview

The Director of Government Relations will be responsible for: 

• leading, implementing and innovating on Fortify Health’s work in facilitating the provision of fortified atta to ashram schools run by the Tribal Development Department in Maharashtra 
• building partnerships with state governments in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab to mainstream atta fortification through a Public Distribution System (PDS)

The Director will lead and grow Fortify Health’s Government Relations team to achieve the organisational goals of government partnerships. Their focus areas will be building and managing relations with government, NGO partners and other stakeholders at both state and national level to mainstream atta fortification through the PDS system. They will lead Fortify Health’s work in developing and managing coalitions of all stakeholders.

The Director of Government Relations will ideally have experience in working with senior bureaucrats at the state and national level, and the ability to build strong connections with government and civil society stakeholders, especially at the level of Minister and Principal Secretary of a major state department. They will have the exciting opportunity to bring their own unique experience into this role and have a significant impact on Fortify Health’s growth. The Director of Government Relations will be the fourth director in Fortify Health’s team and will be the first-ever Director of Government Relations that Fortify Health has hired. They will initially report to Fortify Health’s Director of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation.

Job responsibilities:

SETTING UP A PARTNERSHIP WITH A STATE GOVERNMENT FOR PDS CHAKKI ATTA FORTIFICATION

• Identify possible approaches to convince priority state governments to adopt chakki atta fortification through the PDS system
• Build a scoping team to build partnerships with the PDS department
• Conduct scoping visits to understand the PDS landscape, map stakeholders to plan outreach
• Build proposals for PDS fortification that the state govt can adopt cost effectively with support from Fortify Health
• Meet senior bureaucrats in relevant departments
• Establish Fortify Health as a technical advisor to the state government on PDS chakki atta fortification
• Liaise with NGOs, individuals, think tanks who can support FH in building a rapport with relevant government functionaries
• Sign an MoU with a state government to introduce atta fortification through PDS in at least one priority state
• Define and oversee Fortify Health’s role in the rollout of a PDS chakki atta fortification pilot, and subsequent program
• Work with Director of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation on planning for a study or impact evaluation after smooth project rollout

SCALING UP WORK WITH TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, MAHARASHTRA

• Expand our work in the Tribal Development Department, Maharashtra, to all ashram schools in 1-2 years. This includes building appropriate frameworks for stakeholder plans for every stage of implementation
• Ensure that the government relations team shares regular insights with relevant stakeholders within and across departments within to improve coverage and quality of fortification, including grievance redressal mechanisms
• Innovate on Fortify Health’s model to cost effectively supply fortified chakki atta at scale across various models of atta delivery used in ashram schools in Maharashtra 
• Ensure that Fortify Health’s partnership with tribal development departments is sustained over so that atta fortification can be done sustainability and cost effectively over time
• Organise field work to collect data with support from the M&E team

LEADING AND MANAGING THE GOVERNMENT RELATIONS TEAM

• Lead the Government Relations team at Fortify health to ensure we have the best possible team with the most effective support they need to achieve our partnership targets 
• Line manage all Government Relations Managers
• Work with other Directors and CEO to develop strategies for the organisation expanding government work and ensure that the partnership strategy fits with the larger organisational goals
• Develop feasible yearly and quarterly targets for the Government Relations team as per organisational goals. Communicate goals to the team and brainstorm on challenges they may face in achieving the goals
• Assign roles and responsibilities based on skills, interests and hold yourself and team accountable to meet those goals
• Ensure performance evaluation and management of the Government Relations team members
• Mentor and build knowledge base and motivation of the Government Relations team
• Lead hiring, onboarding and learning and development of the Government Relations team
• Ensure regular communication with the team and support them in building coordination across teams at Fortify Health
• Ensure all Fortify Health team members understand the Government Relations team’s goals and work so they can effectively support partnership in reaching their goals

BUILDING FORTIFY HEALTH’S GOVERNMENT STRATEGY

• Innovate on Fortify Health’s government strategy to improve our cost effectiveness as well as increasing coverage of fortified atta supplied through safety net programs (SNPs) in India
• Use data and evidence to update/sharpen strategy based on clear, testable criteria
• Identify advisors and work with them to help us critically analyse our PDS partnership model and refine it
• Communicate effectively within the Fortify Health team (including the Government Relations team) and with stakeholders about our government strategy
• Work with the Directors of Fortify Health to ensure our open market and government strategy are amplifying each other’s impact
• Identify risks of our strategy and find innovative ways to manage it and include it in implementing our strategy

FUNDER AND FINANCE SUPPORT

• Update funder narrative reports with developments in the government relations team, with special focus on data
• Participate in funder calls to discuss progress of the government relations team or to make pitches of government work to potential funders
• Support operations team in ensuring expenses of the Government Relations team are logged and anticipate upcoming activities to estimate yearly cash flows for the Government Relations team
• Ensure the partnership with different State Departments is managed with the most cost effective approach

BUILDING VISIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIPS WORK WITH STAKEHOLDERS IN THE COUNTRY

• Present Fortify Health’s work with government SNPS across various national and state level forums/webinars
• Establish Fortify Health as a thought partners for state governments and national level organisations  interested in mainstreaming chakki atta fortification in SNPs, especially in PDS
• Identify coalitions/stakeholders that Fortify Health should be a part of to build buy in of large-scale food fortification in India

Requirements

• At least 6 years experience working with government stakeholders, either as a part of a large-scale research project or an implementation project. This includes work done in an implementing NGO which works with the government at the state level in at least one state in any field: education, health, livelihood, WASH, ICDS system, PDS, agriculture, etc.
• Experience in leading conversations with senior bureaucrats at the state level in at least one state for 2-3 years and strong understanding of how bureaucracy works in India
• Ability to take a one line problem statement and come up with a proposed work structure to achieve the aim in a structured way
• Ability to use data for decision making
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail
• Strong communication skills (written and verbal), with strong ability to empathise with others
• Strong ability to mentor others and gauge the mentoring needs of fellow team members skills
• Passionate about contributing to Fortify Health’s mission and impact; driven to improve nutrition at population scale through Fortify Health’s system-building
• Highly organised, proactive, self-managing and conscientious
• Systems mindset 
• Quick learner: able to quickly and effectively seek, absorb and process information for decision-making
• Ability to manage pressure and stay calm
• Flexible, enjoy a high task-volume (i.e. ability to manage a variety of tasks on your plate which require you to frequently switch context). Good at prioritising and managing time
• Willing to travel up to 50% of their time
• Team player with strong organisational values and cultural fit 
• Fluent in written and spoken English and Hindi
• Based in Bhopal or Mumbai
• Right to work in India

Desirable attributes

• Prior work or connections with PDS, Health department at state level with principal secretaries
• A Masters or advanced degree in public health, economics, social work, etc.
• Experience managing teams remotely/hybrid model
• Excellent verbal communication skills in Gujarati and/or Marathi 
• Experience working in India or with teams based in India

Terms of employment

Contract for two years, renewal by mutual agreement

Next Steps

You can start the application process by entering your email address at the top right of this page. The application process will have the following steps:

a) You will answer some questions (estimated time 2-3 hrs). Your responses will go through our de-biased sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then scored by members of our team.

b) If shortlisted, we will invite you to complete a first round of interview (estimated time: 45 minutes).

c) After this, there will be an assessment stage, which includes a few tasks, including building a proposal in a slide deck (estimated time 6 hours). Based on the quality of work submitted, there will be one further round of interview.

d) In the second interview you will be requested to present your submitted deck followed by Q&A, as well as respond to some questions (estimated time: 1 hour).

Expected duration of this application process: 6-8 weeks