Long-term Opportunities for Job Seekers

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Practice Lead, The Mitchell Group

Washington, D.C. / Hybrid

job profile:

The Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Practice Lead is a management position in The Mitchell Group, Inc. (TMG) that takes a leadership role in developing TMG's MEL practice strategy, establishing the MEL Practice goals.  The MEL Practice Lead maintains overall responsibility for the successful execution of TMG's portfolio of MEL contracts with a range of diverse USG and other international donor clients. The MEL Practice Lead ensures that TMG delivers high quality deliverables that meet or exceed the terms of the company’s contracts; and maintains positive client working relationships; and ensures compliance with TMG and client policies and procedures.

The MEL Practice Lead guides and contributes to TMG’s efforts through all phases of new business development for MEL opportunities, including marketing of TMG and enhancement of its professional reputation in MEL services; opportunity identification, building a proposal pipeline, prioritizing bid opportunities and making go/no-go bid decisions; recruitment, teaming, networking, proposal reconnaissance and preparation; technical proposal conceptualization and drafting; contributing to final costing and budgeting; and other tasks related to ensuring that competitive and successful bids are planned, developed and submitted.

The MEL Practice Lead also mentors MEL field staff consultants and partners in contract and subcontract implementation with the objective of achieving the goals and objectives of the SOW, and ensures that deliverables meet TMG and client standards. The MEL Practice Lead strives to ensure client satisfaction and serves as the primary TMG representative and liaison with current and future MEL clients and other stakeholders.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Plays a leadership role in developing and executing the corporate Annual Strategy and in achieving the corporate annual goals (as tracked by the key performance indicators).

• Supports effective implementation of TMG’s contracts focused on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, including but not limited to Agency and Mission MEL strategy and systems development (including TMG’s MEL Strategy), CLA activities, project-level monitoring and verification, data quality assessments, MEL capacity building, assessments and project design, performance evaluations, and impact evaluations.

• Provides oversight on the design and implementation of collaborating, learning and adapting tasks. Contributes to MEL Communities of Practice and collaborates with stakeholders across a range of sectors. Identifies, designs, and supports the implementation of learning events.

• Oversee or manage TMG portfolio of evaluations, including developing evaluation plans, methodologies (quantitative and qualitative), data collection and analysis, and report writing.

• Draft and review project Performance Management Plans (PMPs), including performance indicator reference sheets (PIRS). Support the development of activity level MEL plans.

• Support MEL Practice field staff and consultants to ensure compliance, delivery of quality products, and adherence to the terms of each contract.

• Oversee the MEL contract review process, ensuring that deliverables are on schedule and meet TMG and client quality standards. Ensures compliance with the contract terms and conditions, and USG rules and regulations.

• Serves as a TMG corporate liaison with relevant USAID bureaus, offices, and missions, and other relevant USG agencies, donors, prime contractors and subcontractors.

• Mentors MEL Practice staff to maintain a high level of staff retention through staff professional development, career growth opportunities, and loyalty.

• Works in conjunction with TMG Management and other practice areas to identify synergies to develop successful proposals.

• Coordinates closely with the BD Manager to formulate the annual business strategy. Identifies and maintains a pipeline of relevant new business targets, and markets to USAID and other key clients.

• Manages and writes competitive and compliant technical proposals for submission to USAID and other USG agencies.

• Supervises technical advisors, proposal writers and consultants, and other critical MEL practice staff and consultants involved in MEL new business efforts.

• Leads pre-proposal planning efforts including proactively identifying and tracking potential MEL new business opportunities, prioritizing bid opportunities, conducting research and leading periodic capture trips to explore new business opportunities, identifying potential partners (U.S., local, and international partners), and leading recruitment and teaming discussions.

• Cultivates strategic partnerships for growth with other organizations and consultants, keeping the MEL expert database and consultant roster updated.

• Contributes to the recruitment of long- and short-term staff for competitive bids. Coordinates recruitment with TMG’s BD Manager and team including identifying potential candidates, interviewing and vetting prospective candidates, and participating in final candidate selection.

Required Qualifications:

• Masters Degree or Ph.D. in a relevant subject required.

• 8-12 years of progressively senior level experience required.

• 5+ years of experience supervising teams and managing a portfolio of MEL contracts for international development programs highly preferred; experience with impact evaluations and/or third-party monitoring a plus.

• Experience working with MEL staff and program teams in multi-cultural environments to build a culture of adaptive management, evidence and learning. Experience in designing and facilitating CLA activities, including pause and reflect sessions, developing learning agendas, and collective learning and knowledge sharing highly preferred.

• Familiarity with qualitative, quantitative and mixed data analysis, collection, and reporting, including statistical packages (e.g., Epi Info, ACCESS, SPSS, NVivo, STATA) required.

• Knowledge of data visualization software (including PowerBI, Tableau, and others) and/or GIS software highly preferred.

• Experience with complexity aware monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches and methodologies preferred.

• Experience in at least one of the following technical areas: democracy, human rights and governance; peace and resilience; child labor, forced labor and human trafficking; humanitarian assistance and early recovery; education; health; and/or economic growth programs.

• Experience managing IDIQs.

• Demonstrated ability to write winning proposals.

• Demonstrated ability to plan, manage, and implement all technical, fiscal and administrative components of complex, overseas MEL projects.

• Demonstrated ability to organize and effectively communicate results and impact to a variety of audiences.

• Ability to travel up to 15 percent of the time to developing countries.

• Experience in establishing effective partnerships within and outside the organization.

• Demonstrated excellent leadership and team building skills, with clients, partners, host- country counterparts and other stakeholders.

• Excellent written and oral communication skills in Spanish, French, Arabic or another language of importance for the MEL Practice highly preferred.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

To apply, please email your resume to resumes@headgloballlc.com with “MEL Practice Lead, TMG” in the subject line.