About Digital Green

Digital Green is a global development organization that empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by harnessing the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships. We join forces with governments, private agencies and, most importantly, rural communities themselves to co-create digital solutions that are of the community and for the community. When farmers have the tools they need to connect with one another, they’re far more likely to apply what they’ve learned on their farms and in their households–improving their own livelihoods and those of others in their community, in a manner that’s nutrition-sensitive, climate-resilient, and inclusive.

So far, Digital Green has reached 2.5 million rural community members across over 8,000 villages in India, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Ghana, Niger and Tanzania. Collaborating with over 20 partners, Digital Green has helped facilitate the production and dissemination of over 7,000 localized videos in 50 languages. In addition to this, through our online training courseware, we have trained 17,000 frontline workers, 7,000 of whom have been trained through mobile applications. Digital Green operates from offices in San Francisco, New Delhi, Addis Ababa and Washington, DC. Digital Green is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the US. For more information, please visit Digital Green’s website: www.digitalgreen.org.

Digital Green is entering an exciting phase of development as it expands its activities to additional countries in Asia and Africa. As part of this expansion, Digital Green is building a small team of exceptional individuals with a passion for finding solutions to pressing development problems, a curiosity about complex issues facing the world’s poor, and a drive to tell our story. This is an exciting opportunity to join Digital Green’s new and growing team, supporting our ongoing programs, country expansion and start-up operations.

Job Summary

Digital Green has embarked on an ambitious journey over the next three years to deepen as well as broaden its core offerings to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers with the goal of identifying impactful and scalable tech-enabled solutions for sustainable and resilient agriculture. To achieve this, Digital Green needs to embed climate-change expertise and innovation in our practices, products, and partnerships. We want to challenge ourselves and our partners to use technology, capacity building, and market-based solutions to support farmers to better manage difficult climate realities and tradeoffs today and innovatively adapt to changes they will face in the future. The Global Climate Advisory will build on the framework of currently emerging climate landscaping work, to be informed by learnings from the first year of our organization’s three-year strategy at the global level.

The Head of Global Climate Programs is a part of the broader strategy team and will work in tandem with the Head of Global Gender Programs (TBH) to mainstream a climate resilient and gender equitable lens across all work that Digital Green does. They will specifically:

(1) Mainstream a climate resilience approach throughout DG’s 3-year strategy, implementation plans and product designs

(2) Provide internal capacity-building and guidance to country teams by providing technical support that reflect climate priorities throughout program and product design and implementation, and

(3) Provide thought leadership internally and externally, sharing DG’s insights and learnings; collaborating within the broader international development and AgTech ecosystems to advance policies, programs, and conversations that leverage DG’s work and serve small-scale farmers; and managing and building expert partnerships and identifying new opportunities for collaboration.

The Head of Global Climate Programs will report to the Director of Strategy and engage closely with other strategy, product, and country team staff to achieve their mission.

This position can be based in Ethiopia, Kenya, India or the US. Within the US the position is remote and the individual may be based out of the following states: California, Nevada, Kansas, Washington D.C., Washington, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New York, or Texas. Travel is estimated to be 4-6 weeks a year but may be adjusted depending on the evolution of the role once COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

Key Responsibilities

Support the development of a rigorous, but practical, DG climate resilience mainstreaming approach and climate action plan as part of our 3-year strategy

• Conduct stock-taking of current DG activities, including leveraging insights from an emerging internal landscaping analysis and the 3-year strategic plan. Identify staff and partner challenges, any immediate risks that should be mitigated or opportunities that can be maximized and key stakeholders and champions that can support a more climate positive implementation approach.
• Based on this analysis and expertise, develop a practical, organization-wide strategy that articulates common language, principles, risks and domains of high priority action for climate resilience given DG’s strategic approach and geographies.
• Working in collaboration with leadership, climate leads, and program team members in India, Ethiopia and Kenya to develop a harmonized global action plan and country-level action plans to embed climate resilience in our current and planned work. Sample domains of work will be defined upon joining, but would likely include some of the following domains: soil fertility and water management, conservation and biodiversity management, agro-ecological farming and financial incentives tied to reducing emissions.
• Act as a technical resource when programmatic staff are evaluating activities or strategic directions. For instance, (1) when partners have conflicting views of the viability or rigor of various agricultural practices or approaches (2) where relevant, determining which value chains or practices to focus on, to maximize farmer resilience (3) suggesting assets that farmers organizations can use to advance member profitability and resilience

Provide expert insights and capacity building to global teams and functions, including program implementation and product development, in support of DG’s climate strategy roll-out

• Take a leading role on building staff capacity and knowledge around critical concepts and climate resilient approaches, which may include providing training directly, establishing an internal learning series with outside experts, or creating job aids that simplify how they can support the climate action plan

• Establish and lead an internal climate working group to maintain dialogue amongst climate leadership and global staff, advance and align activities around the climate action plan,and address program-and geography-specific challenges and opportunities as they emerge

• Participate in ideation around new programs and products to identify ways in which climate change risks and opportunities could fundamentally drive design and priorities

• Provide support to product and tech teams to incorporate climate sensitive data priorities and align market incentives and climate into solutions

• Work with business development to refine proposals and concept notes in alignment with our climate action plan

• Problem solve around particular challenges faced by program staff and partners as they implement programs and products

• Manage expert consultancies or long-term partner relationships that augment internal DG expertise on a range of priority issues at the intersection of agriculture climate change (soil science, agronomy, water management

• Work in partnership with the Head of Global Gender Programs to map the intersectionality of climate change and differential effects for women and men; devise approaches jointly that build farmer agency and resilience in the face of shocks

Act as Digital Green’s thought leader on climate change, both distilling DG insights for the broader sector and staying up to date on innovations and breakthroughs in the broader field

• Represent DG and climate action plan at relevant fora
• Manage and develop expert partnerships and sector-specific opportunities
• Work in partnership with the Head, Global MEL to refine appropriate organizational metrics, evaluation designs, and conduct analysis, as appropriate on those data
• Extract key insights and learnings from across the organization and share them externally on appropriate platforms and communications media (publications, public speaking, blogging)
• Work with the product and country teams to stay abreast of business models and policy incentives aiming to reward climate smart farmer behavior. Incorporate insights from emerging evidence and trends in climate policy across target geographies
• Stay up-to-date on the latest research and policy innovations in the field at the global and country-level

Qualifications and Experiences

Our ideal candidate has a combination of relevant scientific knowledge and practical experience implementing programs or partnerships focused on improving the resilience and livelihoods of small-scale farmers, especially using digital technology:

• Master’s degree in international development or public policy with a focus on climate change, or related field plus relevant experience
• At least 8 years of experience working in agricultural development serving stakeholder groups with a focus on climate change
• Experience in translating scientific insights into operational activities in low-income countries, ideally with agricultural extension systems and farmer organizations,
• Experience working with market-based solutions, natural capital, or climate incentives programs a plus
• Experience working with product and technical teams a plus, Existing relationships and experience with prominent global research institutions, agricultural and climate research universities and other likely partners
• Strong organizational, facilitation, verbal, and written communication skills. Ability to work effectively and with sensitivity across barriers such as language, culture, and distance.
• Willing to be a ‘doer’ and someone who creates positive cross-organizational collaboration; position is unlikely to manage a team, but this individual will be able to engage external expertise as required
• Excellent listening skills and empathy.
• Depending on Covid-19 and other considerations, openness to travel 2-4 times a year to regional locations (e.g., India, Ethiopia, Kenya)

To be a successful as a member of the Digital Green team, you will also:

• Have a passion for our mission and a strong desire to impact an up-and-coming non-profit organization.
• Be an innovative and creative thinker –you are not afraid to try something new and inspire others to do so.
• Have a very high level of personal and professional integrity and trustworthiness.
• Have a strong work ethic, take initiative, and require minimal direction.
• Work well independently as well as part of a team.
• Thrive in a fast-paced and fun environment.