Senior Associate / Project Lead

Value for Women is looking for a Senior Associate / Project Lead to work across a variety of fields including impact investing, clean energy, sustainable agriculture, financial inclusion, gender lens investing, inclusive entrepreneurship, in a remote-based role, in an advisory and delivery capacity. This will include delivering high-quality technical assistance, training, advisory, and research to investors, companies, and financial institutions to drive new and inclusive ways of doing business and investment.

About Value for Women

Value for Women is a global social enterprise that is growing in leaps and bounds. Since forming in 2012, Value for Women has grown from a team of 3 to a team of 30+ consultants operating from 14 countries across 5 continents. Our team is our super power, and our proudest resource.

Our global team brings diverse experience and perspectives enabling us to engage on issues of gender through a regional and/or cultural lens. Together, we collaborate on cutting-edge projects that deliver the highest standards to our clients – banks, financial institutions, investors, and companies. In doing so, we help to move the broader market forward on gender and social inclusion.

By joining Value for Women, you will become part of a high-performing organisation that leads by example and delivers gold-standard work to our clients. At the same time, we are a purpose-led organisation where your collaborative spirit, innovative approach and team-building skills can shine.

This role offers 18-20 days of work per month. It is a remote-based role offering the flexibility to work from home, while contributing to a global, results-oriented team. International travel (approximately 10-15%) is expected as part of this role.

Role Overview

The Senior Associate or Project Lead supports the delivery of multiple engagements to our private sector partners and clients. They work across multiple sectors and practice areas at VfW and own the delivery of specific tasks or activities within projects, at the direction of a more senior team member.

They deliver gender lens advisory to business partners, which includes the following:

• Project management: Detail-oriented project administration, client relationship management, internal coordination, work planning and project systems and processes (30-40%);

• Technical delivery: Creation of deliverables, including but not limited to, presentations, tools, technical guides, reports, studies, and evaluations– and presentations to clients of these deliverables (60-70%).

The successful Senior Associate or Project Lead demonstrates an ability to develop content with the audience in mind, approaches project challenges with a problem-solving attitude, and anticipates client needs proactively. They are a team player through and through. They have content expertise in at least one VfW practice area or topic. The Senior Associate or Project Lead may also participate in activities outside of project management and delivery including supporting business development, internal initiatives, and special projects.

The Big Picture

A Sr. Associate / Project Lead will support the work of the organisation to ultimately:

• Understand and tackle barriers women face in business and entrepreneurship

• Reach more women and women-led businesses with financial and non-financial products or services

• Implement gender lens investment strategies, plans and approaches

• Mainstream gender across business strategy, decision-making, operations and value chains

Day to Day Responsibilities

• Lead project planning, administration, project management, and reporting to clients
• Deliver gender lens advisory services across multiple projects. This includes regular creation of and inputting into:
  • Presentations
  • Primary research (primary and secondary) and analysis
  • Gender Action Plans
  • Tools, Templates, Policies to support implementation
  • Reports

• Co-ordinate and prepare for in-person and virtual meetings and/or presentations

• Co-ordinate with colleagues via meetings, email, slack, and other, to revise, iterate, and improve project deliverables towards meeting high quality standards, and exceeding client needs

• Support in client relationship management

• Support the capturing of internal lessons learned in practices areas and participate in organisational learning and sharing

Experience

• Proven experience working in a fast-paced advisory or consultancy environment with demonstrated ability to consistently deliver high quality client deliverables, sometimes under pressure

• Experience providing consulting services to businesses, investment funds, accelerators/incubators, and/or development finance institutions (DFIs) is an asset

• Has worked efficiently and effectively as part of a remote-first organisation/consultancy

• At least 2 years of professional experience in consulting or advisory services, at least 5 years working experience

• Relevant experience working in an emerging market context

• Evidence of gender experience, training, or education preferred, not essential

• A Bachelor's degree or equivalent in business, economics, gender and women's studies or international relations or development or another area

Knowledge and Skills

• Client-centric orientation within a consulting setting

• High competency in advisory consulting services skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, primary and secondary research, synthesis and analysis, project management, collaboration and teamwork

• Strong project and team management skills with the ability to manage various stakeholders

• Critical thinking and problem solving abilities for addressing client needs

• Strong written and verbal communication skills

• Ability to analyse data, identify trends, and draw meaningful conclusions to inform recommendations

• Entrepreneurial, proactive, and solutions-oriented with an adaptable and resilient mindset

• Demonstrated knowledge and practical expertise in at least one of the following: promoting gender equality, women’s economic empowerment, women’s entrepreneurship and/or working within the entrepreneurship ecosystem, financial inclusion, agriculture, sustainable energy in emerging markets

• Full professional proficiency in English is essential. Additional languages are preferred, especially French and Spanish.

Values Fit

• Uphold the principles of trust, equality of opportunities, transparency and collaboration

• Positive attitude and optimism about the role of small and growing businesses in generating positive social impact

• Demonstrated alignment with Value for Women’s mission, vision and ways of working

• Learning, adapting, and demonstrating excitement for contributing to the growth of a growing business with a social mission

Where does this role fit into the team?

The Senior Associate / Project Lead is part of the Advisory team and reports to the Project Lead and/or Engagement Manager.

Compensation

Value for Women exclusively hires self-employed individuals. The fee range for this role is US$150-200 per day depending on experience.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

It’s our mission to unleash potential and we know teams perform best when they are diverse and every team member feels they belong. It’s the unique contributions of all at Value for Women that drives our success and the meaningful work we do.

We are a diverse group of individuals with a wide range of backgrounds including gender, race, ethnicity, geography, cultures and beliefs, as well as experience and education, and our hiring practices aim to deepen that. Application success is based upon individual capabilities and qualifications without regard to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, pregnancy, sexual orientation/affectional preference, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship or disability.

We encourage applications from emerging market professionals who are from and live in the countries where we work as well as individuals identifying as Black, Afro-descendant, and/ or Indigenous. However, we do not ask applicants to disclose this. We aim for the composition of our team to reflect the diverse nature of both the work we carry out and the world we live in and are striving to change.

IDEI Statement

Application Process

Closing date: 10 May 2025

Step 1: Submit your Online Application here by 10 May 2025 including your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter, please answer three questions;

1. Why do you care about Value for Women’s mission?

2. What do you bring to this role?

3. What areas of this role will you need support with?

If you encounter any problems when filling out your online application, please contact us at valueforwomen@v4w.org

Step 2: Shortlist. Our recruiting team reaches out if your profile is a match, and you will be invited to Interview #1, a 45 minute video call interview with our People and Culture Lead and an Engagement Manager. This interview will be a combination of behaviour and technical questions related to your skills and experience.

Step 3: Interview #2. Successful candidates are asked for a 60-minute video call interview with the Director and Associate Director of Advisory. This will be a technical interview and an opportunity for you to ask questions.

Step 4: Interview#3. Written Interview. We invite you to participate in a written interview. You are asked to upload your responses or send them back to us via email within 3 days. You can ask for more time if you have other commitments already scheduled.

Step 5 :Reference Checks. The successful candidate will be asked to provide three references to finalise the recruitment process.

While we do our best to make this 5-step process quick, it can take up to 7 weeks to get to Step 5, depending on the volume of applicants we receive. We appreciate your interest and patience. You can always reach out to ask about the status of your application at valueforwomen@v4w.org. While we do our best to offer feedback to unsuccessful candidates, this is not always possible due to the volume of applications we receive.