Research and Learning Senior Manager

• Position based in Guatemala
• Salary range: $40-70,000/yr depending on experience
• Competitive benefits package

Summary of the Position

Semilla Nueva is recruiting a research and learning senior manager to co-lead the development and publishing of third-party impact evaluations, monitoring and evaluation, reporting, and assist in program design. This position will report to and collaborate closely with the chief strategy and impact officer, supervise a M&E manager and several survey staff. The position is based in Guatemala with extensive travel to rural Guatemala and occasional travel to El Salvador and Honduras. We are looking for a passionate, creative, and outgoing leader who wants to help use impact evaluation to change public policy and donor priorities in order to improve the nutritional intake of millions of people in the next 3-5 years.

Summary of the Organization

Semilla Nueva is one of Central America’s leading social enterprises with a team of over 60 in Guatemala, El Salvador, and the United States. The organization develops high-yielding, climate-resilient maize seeds that have been conventionally bred (non-GMO) to have higher levels of the most important missing nutrients: zinc, iron, and quality protein. Our approach to large-scale adoption of these seeds relies on three

strategies:

Breeding commercially competitive biofortified seeds (non-GMO), which increase incomes and

nutritional intake for farmers:

1. Piloting subsidies to seed companies to profitably sell new, higher-yielding, climate resilient,
2. biofortified seeds at prices the poorest of the poor can afford;
3. Working with governments to institutionalize these subsidies.

Our goal is for a minimal amount of subsidy to support hundreds of thousands of farming families to use biofortified seeds, consume biofortified maize, and sell biofortified maize into the market, while improving their incomes. The biofortified maize sold in the market will be purchased and eaten by millions of poor consumers, improving the nutrition of these populations. Our seed was sold by three seed companies in 2022 in Guatemala, reaching over 20,000 farmers and feeding 800,000 people. Our seed is in testing by the governments of El Salvador and Honduras, and in development for Eastern Africa.

Qualifications

Required:

• Proven experience in quantitative research design, implementation, data analysis and sharing fo nutritional/agricultural programs
• Experience designing and managing health,nutrition, agricultural, and economics research studies
• Experience in program monitoring, evaluation and learning
• Experience at an international NGO, preferably living in a developing context
• Demonstrated leadership, supervisory and conflict-management skills
• Strong technical writing abilities
• Strong networking and inter-organizational collaboration skills
• Fluent English and Spanish
• Experience leading data collection teams. Including drawing samples, survey programming, running audits, backchecks, and setting up dashboards to monitor data quality.

Desired:

• Experience working in Meso-America
• Proficiency in Stata, R, or SAS with strong quantitative and qualitative research skills. If not using statistical software, proficiency in data analysis in Excel or Google Sheets.
• Program management experience
• Existing connections/networks with key research organizations and institutions in Latin America.
• Programming surveys in SurveyCTO, ODK, or Kobo Collect.
• Experience cleaning raw data sets, setting up reproducible analysis, and data storage protocols.
• Experience communicating statistical information to various audiences, including colleagues, leadership, and external collaborators.
• Experience compiling data analysis for reports to internal and external stakeholders - including creating tables, describing methodologies, and tracking sample sizes.

Expectations

• Ability to work independently, proactively, and prioritize/coordinate a variety of activities
• Ability to represent organizational values and develop strategy in a senior leadership role
• Ability to work effectively in a multicultural team
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, constantly evolving work environment

Specific Tasks

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Evaluate the economic, climate resilience, and food security impact of our program on farming families
• Lead the creation of protocols and quality control systems for all major monitoring and evaluation systems, including capture of farmer contact information, phone surveys, and in field measurements with farmers.
• Lead the training of Semilla Nueva, partner, and government staff on the use of Semilla Nueva monitoring systems and supervise their implementation
• Supervise data storage and accessibility

Third party studies

• Co-develop studies with third party researchers to measure the nutritional and livelihood impact of Semilla Nueva’s programs on beneficiary families, including studies on biological impacts of biofortified grain, ex-ante impact models, livelihood impact evaluations, and climate resilience studies
• Support the creation of third party ex-ante impact models and cost-effectiveness analyses
• Lead efforts to visualize the impact of Semilla Nueva’s programs to make it easier for donors, partners, and government to understand the potential and impact of biofortified seeds

Bilateral Relationships and Proposals

• Participate in relationship management with major donors and bilaterals such as USAID
• Participate in proposal writing

Management and Leadership

• Develop and grow a professional team dedicated to the areas above
• Work with the leadership team on organizational and strategic development, including leading writing of new strategic and operational plans

To apply please send your CV to Trabajo@semillanueva.org with the subject, Research and Learning Manager and your last name.

Feel free to send any recent publications and/or 2-3 bullet points of why you think you would be a good fit for the role and we may be a good fit for you.