With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Key Responsibilities:

VisionFund is World Vision’s microfinance provider serving vulnerable clients through loans, savings, and insurance. We enable families to grow their livelihoods in hard to reach, rural locations in 28 countries so that caregivers can create secure futures for their children. We believe in brighter futures for children; empowering families to create incomes and jobs; unlocking economic potential for communities to thrive.

Join VisionFund as we seek to end intergenerational poverty through microfinance.

Job Summary

The Global Governance Director role is to ensure that the VisionFund International (VFI) and MicroFinance Institutions (MFI’s) Boards are composed well and are effective, practising strong strategic leadership and oversight, and demonstrating best practice in their corporate governance. This role has overall accountability for the quality of governance throughout the MFIs including ownership of the strategic framework for governance, and the development of VFI governance policies. This role is responsible for reviewing and updating existing Governance policies, procedures and charters, and developing new ones where appropriate. This role is also responsible for the effective functioning of VFI’s Board, including organising VFI Board meetings, writing Minutes and submitting VFI Board meeting report to the Stewardship Committee of the World Vision International (WVI) Board. In addition, the role is tasked to strengthen MFI Board development, particularly in the areas of recruitment and training, and oversee all Governance issues across the network of 25 MFIs. Additionally, the the role is tasked to build and maintain a close relationship with World Vision governance, to ensure alignment where possible in areas such as Board assessments and peer reviews, and to network with professional governance bodies and external organizations, such as the Institute of Directors.

Key responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Engagement (25%)

• Create, oversee and implement VFI governance strategy
• Develop an annual work plan for capacity building and other learning processes
• Annual Governance Forum planning and implementation
• Responsible for the Board appointment approval process, making recommendations to the VFI’s Board Chair, Vice Chair & President & CEO (on behalf of the VFI Board) based on interviews of appropriate candidates
• Make recommendations to the VFI President & CEO for approval, any exceptions requested by MFI Boards.

Board Development & Capacity Building (35%)

• Provide capacity building and development facilitation and training in best practice governance to Boards
• Facilitate the assessment of governance effectiveness in MFI Boards and develop action plans to address identified gaps
• Ensure monitoring, observation, regular communication and quality Board meeting minuting and reporting
• Coach and advise CEOs, Company Secretary’s and senior leadership to support their Boards in order to seek to maximise the value from their work
• MFI Boards understand their governing roles and responsibilities in strategic oversight of the MFI.

Support the VFI Board Governance Processes (15%)

• Work with the senior leadership team (SLT) to ensure the appropriate deliverables for VFI’s Board and ready and uploaded in a timely way to the Boardvantage software
• Minute Board and Committee meetings to ensure that discussions and resolutions are accurately captured, with an appropriate amount of detail
• Work with the Committee Chairs to ensure that various cyclical deliverables are covered, such as annual Committee and Board self-assessments
• Undertake new Board member’s orientation

Oversee Governance Advisor (15%)

• Responsible for overseeing a Governance Advisor, (to be recruited), who assists with the administration and communication tasks
• Performance of the Governance Advisor is well managed so they are steering to meet their targets and produce the deliverables that have been set for them

Ad hoc duties and projects (10%)

• Other ad hoc duties and projects as required, e.g. there was an Oliver Wyman project on Governance that came up as an opportunity to revisit VFI’s Governance model
• Some capacity to take on additional projects and ad hoc duty, as required by the Board Chair, CEO or CRO. (This is mostly expected to be under 10% of the role).
• Prepare Quarterly Performance Report on behalf of the VFI President & CEO for submission to WVI Global Field Operations.

Position Requirements

• Master’s degree. Business Administration, or relevant professional qualification, in Governance or a related field.
• Bachelor’s degree, ideally in a related subject, such as Law
• Experience working as a Legal Counsel/Chief Legal Officer and Company Secretary in a corporate environment
• Must have a clear understanding and experience of the different governance needs of a financial institution and a large NGO, i.e. World Vision
• Training skills are essential and ability to develop training materials and case studies
• Must have worked with Boards for not less than 5 years
• Must have strong leadership skills and ability to work independently
• Must have training and good understanding of corporate governance, latest global trends in   corporate governance and be able to advise on implications for MFI Boards
• Good communication and negotiation skills are essential

Preferred

• Any additional Governance Professional Qualifications or experience preferred
• Fluency in written and spoken English suitable for influencing at the most senior levels
• Knowledge of Spanish and/or French preferred
• The preference for this role is Europe and Africa Timezone but flexible on other locations

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local Applicants Only