ABOUT Operation End Starvation (OES):

Operation End Starvation (OES) is a new, independent, U.S.-based 501(c)(3) global platform designed to end child deaths from hunger. Built as an American-led public-private partnership, OES is structured to transform how lifesaving malnutrition interventions are financed, procured, and delivered. Cost-effectiveness is OES’s first principle and North Star.

Malnutrition is a leading underlying cause of child deaths globally, contributing to nearly half of all deaths in children under five. Proven, low-cost solutions exist, yet millions of children still die due to poor focus and targeting, fragmented systems, slow funding flows, and bureaucratic delivery constraints.

OES is designed to change that.

By combining catalytic philanthropic capital with large-scale public funding, OES introduces a new model that is:

• Transparent and accountable in how funds are deployed.

• Competitive in how procurement and delivery are structured.

• Lean and fast in execution, removing unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Designed to operate at scale with measurable, lifesaving impact.

OES’s mission is twofold:

• Immediate impact: Rapidly scale delivery of malnutrition treatment to save lives.

• System transformation: Build a durable, multi-donor platform that fundamentally improves how global malnutrition solutions are financed and delivered.

OES already has substantial philanthropic seed funding from a network of foundations, and in July 2026, the U.S. Department of State announced its first $100 million direct investment into the platform. OES is expected to quickly become a central mechanism for moving hundreds of millions of dollars in malnutrition investments worldwide and save millions of lives. OES will drive a historic leap forward in the fight to finally end child deaths from starvation.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

To apply, please submit the following to openrecruits@headgloballlc.com with “Liaison, Nigeria” in the subject line:

• A brief cover letter

• Resume or CV

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Nigeria Liaison Officer is OES’s consistent, senior-level presence in Nigeria. The role leads OES's key institutional relationships in Nigeria, including with government counterparts at national and subnational levels, nutrition coordination structures, donors, and implementing partners. The Nigeria Liaison Officer establishes OES as a credible and useful presence in-country: known to the people who influence OES’s impact in-country and trusted by them as a knowledgeable and responsible partner.

The Nigeria Liaison Officer brings two forms of essential country judgment. First, political judgment: what is viable, where opportunities exist for support, co-financing, or policy change, where the red lines are, whose agreement is required, and how to secure it. Second, operational judgment: how delivery actually works in Nigeria, what partners can and cannot realistically do, where plans are likely to encounter obstacles, and where context-specific efficiencies or cost savings may be possible. These two dimensions shape OES’s country strategy and its evolution over time.

While the role of the Nigeria Liaison Officer revolves largely around political engagement, representation, partnership development, advocacy, and problem-solving. The role anticipates the political, operational, and access problems that will affect OES's portfolio in Nigeria, and ensures that concerns and opportunities are raised early to the Nigeria Portfolio Lead and to OES leadership. The Liaison Officer also provides the context-specific assessment and judgement that informs the decisions of the Nigeria Portfolio Lead, who owns grant management, technical oversight, program scope, partner performance, and funding recommendations. The Nigeria Liaison Officer's authority therefore is primarily representational and advisory. The role represents OES’s agreed positions externally, exercises judgment within established parameters, and provides country assessments that carry significant weight in OES’s strategic and operational decisions.

This position reports to the Director of Global Programs and works closely with the Nigeria Portfolio Lead and relevant programs, analytics, supply chain, advocacy, and security colleagues across OES.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

External Representation, Coordination and Positioning: Establish OES as a credible and complementary presence in Nigeria.

• Serve as OES’s senior interlocutor with government counterparts and relevant national and subnational nutrition coordination structures, building the standing and relationships in Nigeria that allow OES to work effectively with government on shared priorities, and to secure the authorizations, agreements, and support its work requires.

• Engage consistently with the Nutrition Cluster and relevant sector fora, ensuring OES's targeting, pipeline, and coverage are visible to the wider response, and that OES's planning reflects it.

• Assess current and potential domestic resource commitments for nutrition commodities and other forms of co-financing, and identify opportunities to strengthen or complement those investments.

• Represent OES to in-country donors, supporting alignment against current and upcoming funding flows, donor priorities, and plans.

• Build and strengthen OES's relationships with implementing and supply chain partners, establishing OES as a presence that understands the operating environment and can be told about problems or opportunities early.

• Represent OES’s agreed advocacy and policy positions in-country, in close coordination with the Director of Advocacy and Government Relations.

• Ensure OES's model, priorities, and plans in Nigeria are accurately understood by the government, partners, and the wider nutrition community.

Nigeria Judgment and Strategic Advice: Ensure OES's plans in Nigeria are viable, well-targeted, and filling a real gap.

• Maintain OES's understanding of the political and operating environment in Nigeria: what is possible, what is obstructed, and what is changing.

• Assess where OES can add meaningful value, where its investments complement existing coverage, and where duplication is a risk, using current caseload, coverage, pipeline, and funding information from other actors.

• Contribute country judgment to OES's partner selection and performance management processes, ensuring reviews assess what each partner can realistically deliver in Nigeria's operating conditions.

• Advise on the operational feasibility of OES's plans in Nigeria, including supply chain strategy, ensuring that what is cost-effective in design is deliverable in practice.

• Serve as OES’s primary in-country focal point for country intelligence and data acquisition, helping ensure forecasts and targeting are grounded in current operational reality.

Problem-Solving and Early Warning: Anticipate what will go wrong, and help resolve it before it impacts OES activities and operations.

• Anticipate operational, political, and access problems in OES's portfolio, and raise them to OES early enough to act.

• Support partners in resolving access constraints, government authorization and registration issues, and coordination-level obstacles that impede delivery.

• Work with partners and OES colleagues to diagnose and resolve operational, access, coordination, and government-related delivery barriers, while escalating partner capability or performance concerns to the Nigeria Portfolio Lead.

• Where concerns arise about delivery or commodity handling, gather sufficient initial facts and context to enable the appropriate OES team to determine next steps and follow-up.

• Visit treatment sites, facilities, and warehouses as required to build relationships, ground the role's judgment, and respond to emerging concerns.

Learning, Evidence and Communication: Ensure OES's work in Nigeria is understood accurately by funders, partners, and the sector.

• Capture the operational learning emerging from the Nigeria portfolio (e.g. what is working, what is not, and why) and route it to the Director of Cost-Effectiveness & Innovation and the Director of Global Programs.

• Provide the country context, field material, and program insight that OES's communications and development colleagues need to represent the work accurately.

• Brief funders, Board members, and external visitors to Nigeria.

Safeguarding and Security Escalation: Serve as OES's in-country escalation channel for operational concerns.

• Serve as an in-country escalation channel for safeguarding and PSEA concerns, serious security incidents, and credible allegations of misconduct, ensuring concerns are promptly routed through OES’s designated processes.

• Confirm through appropriate program and field engagement that partner PSEA and community feedback channels are established and accessible, and raise any identified gaps through OES’s designated safeguarding processes.

• Support OES's response to any incident arising in the Nigeria portfolio, including in-country follow-up and liaison with authorities and partners.

• Work closely with the Security Advisor to implement OES’s security arrangements in Nigeria, including appropriate accommodation and transport, movement planning, and communications protocols.

Nigeria Presence: Ensure OES has a strong, working footing on the ground.

• Support the establishment and maintenance of OES’s practical operating presence in Nigeria by providing local knowledge, relationships, and coordination on registration, authorizations, office arrangements, and local service providers, in partnership with the appropriate OES operations and legal teams.

• Prepare and host visits by OES leadership, board members, funders, and technical colleagues, including itineraries, government and partner meetings, site visits, security arrangements, and briefing materials.

Required Experience and Competencies:

Applicants must currently have authorization to work in Nigeria and should confirm their work authorization in their application. OES cannot sponsor work authorization for this role at this time.

• Twelve or more years of progressive experience working in Nigeria across government relations, public policy, humanitarian response, global health, or related fields, including substantial senior-level external engagement.

• Deep familiarity with the operating context of Nigeria, including its coordination architecture, government structures at national and subnational level, and nutrition response landscape.

• Demonstrated experience representing an organization to government authorities, humanitarian coordination structures, and donors at a senior level, with the credibility to hold that seat on OES's behalf from day one.

• Strong operational familiarity with humanitarian or health program delivery in Nigeria, with experience in nutrition and wasting treatment strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated ability to assess the operational feasibility of a program or supply plan (e.g. access, partner capability, and delivery constraints) and to identify the risks and cost realities that are not visible from a headquarters vantage point.

• Working understanding of how nutrition supply chains operate in Nigeria and how access, customs, storage, and last-mile constraints affect delivery; direct experience with RUTF or therapeutic food supply chains strongly preferred.

• Demonstrated ability to read the coverage and pipeline of a humanitarian response and identify where genuine gaps and duplication sit.

• Demonstrated experience operating in fragile or access-constrained settings and applying sound security judgment, including familiarity with movement planning, risk assessment, and incident escalation.

• Demonstrated commitment to safeguarding and PSEA standards, with experience handling sensitive concerns appropriately.

• Willingness and ability to travel regularly within Nigeria, including to areas of constrained access.

• Fluency in English required; fluency in additional local languages strongly preferred.

WHAT YOU BRING:

• The standing and relationship-building ability to represent a new institution credibly to senior stakeholders and establish access quickly.

• Political judgment: an instinct for what is viable, where the openings are, and what will not move, as well as the credibility to be heard by senior counterparts.

• Operational judgment: the ability to tell, before it happens, which plans will encounter trouble in Nigeria and which will hold.

• Candor with OES and with partners in equal measure, and relationships strong enough to carry a difficult conversation without damaging them.

• The independence and confidence to give OES a difficult or unwelcome assessment when the evidence requires it, and to stand behind that judgment.

• Comfort in a role whose weight comes from judgment and relationships rather than from budget or line authority.

• Self-direction, and the resourcefulness to establish an institutional presence where none yet exists.

WHAT OES OFFERS:

• A rare opportunity to take a high-potential early-stage institution from strong initial foundations to scaled global impact.

• The chance to shape how a major public-private platform is built, scaled, and governed.

• A mission-driven, entrepreneurial environment with significant ambition and institutional complexity.

• Close partnership with senior leadership, philanthropy, and policymakers.

• Competitive compensation commensurate with the role's seniority, complexity, and scope.

PLEASE NOTE:

This position is bound by OES’s PSEA Code of Conduct and safeguarding standards, and is responsible for upholding them in all interactions with program participants and communities and for reporting any concern through OES’s designated channels.

This role is intended to be based in Nigeria. The final hiring mechanism and employment arrangement will be determined based on applicable law, work authorization, and OES’s ability to engage the selected candidate in Nigeria.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

To apply, please submit the following to openrecruits@headgloballlc.com with “Liaison, Nigeria” in the subject line:

• A brief cover letter

• Resume or CV

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.