Organization: World Resources Institute
Location: Washington, DC, US
The World Resources Institute (WRI) is seeking a Director to lead its Markets & Enterprise Program. WRI's work in this area has focused on the role of the private sector in tackling some of the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. The Institute has been a pioneer in this field, building a portfolio of ground-breaking initiatives that aim to influence capital markets, investment flows, and enterprise development to achieve greater sustainability. The program is well positioned to grow and increase its level of impact.
The program's work is currently clustered around the following areas of work:
- New Ventures: New Ventures supports small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that drive sustainable development through "green" products and services in six of the world's most dynamic emerging economies: Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia and Mexico. Since its inception in 1999, New Ventures has provided business development and investor engagement services for over 200 SMEs, leading to nearly $200 million of investment into these companies. Looking forward, New Ventures will focus on ensuring that its six local centers are financially and institutionally self-sustaining and that its research and analysis leverages significant investment flows into three sectors: clean energy, clean water and sustainable agriculture.
- Envest: Envest provides forward-looking, applied financial research that translates complex environmental trends into financial terms useful to investors ("environmental intelligence for tomorrow's markets"). In this way, Envest helps investors identify, quantify, and communicate the financial value of environmentally superior business strategies. Ultimately, Envest will strive for a transformative shift in private-sector investment decisions by demonstrating the financial relevance of climate, energy, water and forest issues.
The Program Director will lead a multidisciplinary team of 15+ staff and 1) provide overall strategic direction to the program; 2) lead fundraising and management of a budget of over three million USD; and 3) act as external spokesperson for WRI's business work, presenting MEP work at external events, positioning him/herself as an expert in this field. The position requires a strong strategic mindset and in-depth knowledge of environment, development and private sector issues. On the latter, the successful candidate will know how to best relate to MEPs target audience which includes investors, entrepreneurs, multinational companies, and NGOs in developing countries. In addition, the candidate should be comfortable operating in a results-focused culture. The position is located at WRI's headquarters in Washington DC and reports to the Executive Vice President/Managing Director. The successful candidate will be expected to travel internationally. This is a challenging position that offers a unique opportunity to have a major impact on environmental sustainability issues.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership:
- Develop and maintain a compelling vision for the Markets and Enterprise goal that contributes to WRI's mission and leverages WRI's unique value proposition
- Provide strategic direction to New Ventures and Envest to ensure they have a high-impact strategy that achieves concrete and significant results on-the-ground.
- Identify potential new lines of work that would lead to transformative change in support of the Markets and Enterprise goal.
- Act as the external voice for the program. Lead outreach and communication efforts and promote staff research findings through briefings to corporate leaders, practitioners and policy-makers.
Management:
- Provide day-to-day management of MEP staff: help staff focus on achieving results, motivate and develop personnel, and identify and manage conflicts and problems as they arise.
- Keep program and projects focused on critical issues and opportunities where new insights, analyses, proposals or efforts could lead to significant impact.
- Delegate authority to team leaders and ensure that they are effective and supported in their leadership role, but follow-up to ensure that planned objectives are achieved.
- Oversee the quarterly program budgeting process. Ensure that program and project budgets are managed within budget and according to donor procedures.
- Review draft publications to ensure they meet the highest standards of quality.
- Contribute to overall management at WRI through participation in the Management Team and WRI's strategic planning and peer review processes.
Fundraising:
- Lead efforts to develop and secure long-term funding for program and new projects based on identified needs in coordination with team leaders and WRI's Development Department. This will entail leveraging existing relationships with businesses and government donors, as well as cultivating and maintaining new relationships. Director assumes principal responsibility for program's financial health.
- Mentor staff to broaden their fundraising skills, help them manage existing fundraising relationships and cultivate new funding prospects.
- Represent the Program's interests and needs in decisions about institutional funding.
Qualifications
The ideal candidate will have:
- Demonstrated commitment to environment and development issues.
- Proven track record of real world outcomes and influence. Substantial experience working with the private sector on environment issues, particularly in the context of developing countries
- Proven management skills. Desire to work in a collegial fashion as part of a team with little hierarchy, along with ability to motivate staff and teams. Willingness to be accessible to staff and fair and transparent in decision making.
- Established network of professional contacts with private sector, multilateral institutions, governments, and/or individual donors. Proven ability to secure funding from the above groups on a large scale (over $2M per year), as well as extensive experience with project development and proposal writing.
- Superb analytical and strategic thinking skills as well as the ability to communicate clearly and compellingly to diverse audiences both verbally and in writing.
- Willingness to travel internationally for about 20% of time.
- Advanced degree with a minimum of 10 years management and team-building work experience. MBA, Finance, Economics or other similar degree preferred.
Salary Range: $135K - $145K (depending on background and experience) and excellent benefits package.
If you are interested in this position please send a cover letter and your CV to:
Vivian Fong, Director of Human Resources
World Resources Institute, 10 G. St. NE, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20002
E-mail: VFong@wri.org Fax: 202-729-7890
World Resources Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is WRI's policy to recruit, hire, and provide opportunities for advancement in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, sexual preference, parental status, or disability.
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Authored by: Francisco Noguera
Changemakers is one of the web's most dynamic and interesting destinations for those of us interested in ideas and their power to advance tangible change in the lives of the "next billion". Its recent re-design and the upcoming finals for one of their competitions (one very much in the vein of development through enterprise) are reasons compelling enough for me to ask you: have you been to Changemakers lately? If the answer is no, well it's about time.
Their new site is refreshing in so many ways. Visually it a made a great leap forward, showing beautiful pictures that introduce their variuous competitions, like the ones that ends in just five days which is focused on innovations to improve the lives of rural communities. It also has other new and interesting features such as a space for stories, a summary of Changemakers and solutions by country and a space where anyone can start group discussions on topic related to social change.
The site (and competitions in general) serves a very important purpose: it helps unveil many solutions and entrepreneurs out there, who would otherwise remain unheard of. This platform opens up the space for people interested to identify previous entries ideas in their topic and region of interest. The one thing I'm not 100% on board with is Changemakers' prize structure. Cash prizes (which are the norm at least in the competitions I've checked out before... I hereby confess I've not looked at every one of them) only go so far. Most of the entries in compatitions like Changemakers are entrepreneurs who would find other prizes much more useful for the purpose of launching their ventures.
Sure, you can argue that the competition's prize is not only cash but also recognition and visibility, which are also of great importance. Agreed. But how about recognition plus visbility plus, say, a scholarship at business incubator such as GSBI? Or a scholarship to travel and participate in the next IDDS or Maker Faire? Each competition draws a different pool of entrepreneurs who may benefit from different opportunities and connections that may well replace or add to the current cash prizes.
The good news is that "prize design" is becoming more of a science and less of an art. At least that's my takeaway after reading Rob's entry on Incentive2Innovate, thanks to which I found out that McKinsey has been doing some thinking on the subject of prizes and competitions for social change. (A bit off topic but this is not the only fascinating thing McKinsey has surprised me with lately. Have you been to What Matters?)
I look forward to continuing the conversation on the topic and prizes and competitions in BoP contexts. In fact, stay tuned for what I hope will be an interesting interview with a researcher on the topic. However, this shouldn't be a distraction from the original purpose of this post: Check out the new Changemakers. If anyone in this space is testing ideas in this area for the rest of us to take action and comment, they are the ones.
Authored by: Rob Katz
Husk Power Systems, a company we profiled here on NextBillion back in October, was announced today as the winner of the Global Business Plan competition sponsored by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco Systems. As the winning entrant, Husk Power walks away with $250,000 in seed funding, which they will use to build and operate more power plants in rural areas of Bihar, India's poorest state.
Congratulations to Chip Ransler, Manoj Sinha and the rest of the Husk Power Systems team on this big win. They have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and FOX Business. More PR will inevitably follow.
I am personally extremely excited about this development, not only because I know and like Chip and Manoj. Part of my excitement stems from the fact that Husk Power is working in some of the poorest, worst-served parts of India - Bihar - that are hardest-hit by the poverty penalty. Many BoP-focused companies work in relatively better-off urban areas or peri-urban villages, where average incomes are higher and consequently, so is ability to pay.
But the single biggest factor that has me so excited about this is that the Global Business Plan venture competition was not limited to socially-focused businesses. Rather, Draper Richards and Cisco collected thousands of entries from companies around the world, most of them focused on a single bottom line. That the winner is a legitimate triple bottom line company - generating financial, social AND environmental benefits - shows how much the social sector is mainstreaming in the eyes of "non-social" investors.
Much remains to be seen - Husk Power remains a start up, and will for the foreseeable future - but, at least for today, there is reason to celebrate in Bihar.
Authored by: Rob Katz
By the time we got to Woodstock / We were half a million strong - Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock"
Well, there won't be half a million of us, but as Bill Baue noted in a recent CSR Wire article, the Social Capital Markets conference (2009 vintage) is quickly shaping up to be an important event for our generation of changemakers, investors, intrapreneurs, policymakers and innovators. (His exact quote was "...[SoCap09] is quickly becoming the Woodstock for social entrepreneurs.") NextBillion.net covered the event extensively last year, and we are pleased to be going back as a "Deep Channel Partner" (aka Media Partner).
The SoCap team has released a version 1.0 of the schedule and speakers, which deserve a close look. Keynote speakers include
- Sonal Shah, head of President Obama's Office of Social Innovation;
- Alvaro Rodriguez-Arregui of IGNIA Fund;
- William Foote of Root Capital;
- Jed Emerson of Uhuru Capital Management
And many more. The panel sessions also look promising, giving participants a deeper dive than a typical "social innovation 101" you would get at a less-focused conference. Take a close look at the web site for all the details; you can even follow SoCap on Twitter, read their (excellent) blog, check out the Facebook page, etc.
Once you've done your diligence, take advantage of a 40% discount (!) that will expire July 8. Use the code WEB40 to receive the special discount.
Francisco and I will both be at SoCap; will you?
Authored by: Tayo Akinyemi
Occasionally one encounters a novel application of a familiar technology. In this case, it's blogging. David Roodman, fellow at the Center for Global Development and architect of the Commitment to Development Index, is writing an open-book blog about microfinance. He drafts a chapter, then posts it for comment and critique. Mr. Roodman shared the introduction to his book on February 17th and has since authored nine additional sections. Although the work looks substantially complete, there is still a tremendous opportunity to contribute to its evolution. (Talk about opportunities for co-creation!)
What I appreciate most about Mr. Roodman's approach (apart from his willingness to share the manuscript-in-progress), is his clear and thoughtful use of a framework to couch the discussion. The purpose of the book is to explore the impact of microfinance from three primary perspectives : development as freedom, development as institution-building, and development as measurable impact.
Development as freedom, a concept introduced by Amartya Sen, refers to the ability to exercise one's sense of agency and maintain control over one's life. With respect to microfinance, the question is whether (and under what circumstances), microfinance increases or limits the freedom of those who use it. Creative destruction, described by Joseph Schumpeter as the dissolution of the status quo caused by disruptive innovation, is the underpinning of development as institution building. From this perspective, the relevant query is whether the evolution of financing for MFIs has improved the state of the field. Finally, development as measurable impact explores the debate over whether social impact can be meaningfully measured. In other words, how do we know if microfinance is really helping the poor?
Editor's note: A blog post written by Manuel Bueno, published yesterday on NextBillion.net, addresses this exact question.
Given the extreme contrast between microfinance success stories and those of disaster and indebtedness, a balanced interpretation of these accounts and a rigorous exploration of the truth is quite welcome. Check out David Roodman's Microfinance Blog here.
Happy Reading!
Editor's Note: Anushka Thewarapperuma is a consultant with Advisory Services - Access to Finance at the IFC. Think you?ve got better money management skills than the world?s poorest? You might be surprised to find out that you?d be up against stiff competition. Jonathan Morduch and Daryl Collins report on their journey to various corners of the world (Bangladesh, India and South Africa to be exact) to observe how people living on less than $2 a day managed their financial lives in the recently published book Portfolios of the Poor. Their findings were summed up nicely in a recent review in the Washington Post: "the poorest people on earth engage in the sort of sophisticated money management that would make Chuck Schwab proud." Morduch and Collins recently gave a presentation on their findings at CGAP. The punch line of their presentation: despite any perceptions to the contrary, the poor are by...
I am often confused when using acronyms. In the vast terminology of public private partnerships (PPP), it?s not hard to do. For example in a lot of countries the acronym PFI, which stands for Private Finance Initiative, is used as a synonym for PPP (Public Private Partnership). While the term PFI originated in the UK, in that country it is not synonymous with PPP. PFI has a more specific meaning, relating to a special government investment policy that clearly indicates what is and what is not PFI. While Wikipedia defines PFI as a ?method to provide financial support to PPPs??which certainly is not correct?and ?as part of a wider program for privatization and deregulation??which is not correct either?since PFI is a form of PPP and it is not a mechanism for privatization or deregulation. Having said this, I have to add that privatization or deregulation can be one of the...
How hard is it to fire someone in Mexico? It is apparently sufficiently hard that they offer courses on how to do it. I spent seven years in Mexico, and I still receive some Mexican spam. Here is my translation of an email I received which was advertising a one day course on how to fire employees: Firing a person is a delicate process filled with legal ?mines.? It doesn?t matter how prepared you feel or how correct your decision is. Not doing it the right way puts you at risk for a lawsuit. No manager should begin this process without attending this seminar!! I don?t doubt that it is hard to fire workers in Mexico. One can probably easily step into a legal minefield by firing a worker, even if the worker really deserved to be fired. Based on this article, however, workers might need a course of their...
Call them taxpayers, citizens, or just simply the public?they are the reason why public private partnerships (PPPs) are created. They are the users and the ultimate financiers, whether by paying taxes or tolls, and they want to have a bigger role in decisions about what infrastructure shall be built and how. It?s no surprise that public opinion is the ultimate judge of the success of PPP projects. And this ultimate judge is not always just; it does not always have the right information at the right time. It?s up to fallible public sector officials to ensure that proper information and reporting is available to the public and that proper stakeholder consultations take place prior to key decisions regarding the project. Interestingly, a lot of government officials believe that the huge public interest in PPP projects is dangerous, and they would prefer to use traditional procurement procedures, as these provide the...
At first you might guess that it?s the big firms that make an easy target. But we need to do more than guess?the policy implications are quite different if the answer is ?big? or ?small.? If large firms are more efficient and do more R&D and export to other countries, then crime can be more harmful to the economy when directed against such firms. However, compared with large firms, wages and profits may be lower in the smaller firms. Crime directed against small firms can therefore be regressive (causing more harm to the relatively worse-off). It turns out that getting to the bottom of this question requires drawing a careful distinction between two concepts: the incidence and burden of crime. Typically, studies of crime are based on the incidence of crime as measured by the percentage of agents (households, firms, etc.) in a country/city that suffer one or more incidents...
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The July edition of 
We have always maintained that even though clean and green ventures are good examples of responsible investments, they do not often fall within our scope of socially based private equity deals. However, the July edition of 
