Overview

The Director for Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) will lead in enhancing the impact and visibility of CIFOR-ICRAF’s GESI profile across local, national and global communities working within our impact areas and at the intersections of social equity and food systems, forests, agroforestry, landscapes.

Building on CIFOR-ICRAF’s ongoing GESI portfolio and the organizational strategy, the Director will bring in the latest insights in GESI from both research and development, and lead the organization on GESI mainstreaming and training of staff on GESI topics for communication, impact and visibility. She/he will build networks within the CIFOR-ICRAF scientific community, particularly team building with GESI researchers across gender, intersectionality, indigenous, youth and other relevant topics. This includes serving as a facilitator of institutional processes that support the consideration of gender/ GESI in all projects, establishing systems for data collection across projects, and monitoring and aggregating information to capture and catalyze institutional impact. She/he will support staff fundraising for research through the co-development of a portfolio of GESI R&D projects and connect researchers to the donor and development communities, and thus further position the institution to secure programmatic funding to support CIFOR-ICRAF’s impact area on Equity.

The candidate will assure CIFOR-ICRAF representation and participation on GESI in key external arenas (e.g. the gender caucuses of the three UN conventions, UNWomen, the CG gender platform/ accelerator). She/he will work with communications and Quality for Impact (Q4I) to assure strong and coherent messaging to strategically position CIFOR-ICRAF and its unique value proposition. She/he should therefore be comfortable in navigating across CIFOR-ICRAF’s transformative partnerships, with civil society organizations (including e.g. rural women’s movements), with governments at local, national and international levels, and to liaise with world-leading international organizations, education institutes and companies.

Duties and responsibilities

Institutional leadership:

• The candidate is expected to fully institutionalize GESI at CIFOR-ICRAF and assure coordination across the institution. She/he will lead an interdisciplinary team of GESI specialists to include project-based CIFOR-ICRAF staff working on GESI within their own area or theme of expertise (gender, youth, indigenous peoples, migrants, etc., within CIFOR-ICRAF thematic and country teams). She/he will team-build with these staff, facilitating and supporting the development of cohorts and focal points. S/he will support continued professional development and visibility of the core GESI team, while building additional GESI expertise across the institution through training programs on basic GESI concepts and applications in project management, and emerging directions in GESI for research and development. The Director will lead especially on gender and support gender mainstreaming throughout the research and development portfolio(s) and support focal points to provide intersectional specialization on other dimensions of social inclusion.

Communications and impact:

• The candidate will work across institutional units and processes to ensure gender and GESI mainstreaming throughout, and unifying messaging across internal and external communications. She/he will work closely with the communications and GLF, resource mobilization and partnerships teams to enhance the visibility of CIFOR-ICRAF GESI expertise within our established spheres of influence as well as extend our reach into gender

Institutional leadership:

• The candidate is expected to fully institutionalize GESI at CIFOR-ICRAF and assure coordination across the institution. She/he will lead an interdisciplinary team of GESI specialists to include project-based CIFOR-ICRAF staff working on GESI within their own area or theme of expertise (gender, youth, indigenous peoples, migrants, etc., within CIFOR-ICRAF thematic and country teams). She/he will team-build with these staff, facilitating and supporting the development of cohorts and focal points. S/he will support continued professional development and visibility of the core GESI team, while building additional GESI expertise across the institution through training programs on basic GESI concepts and applications in project management, and emerging directions in GESI for research and development. The Director will lead especially on gender and support gender mainstreaming throughout the research and development portfolio(s), and support focal points to provide intersectional specialization on other dimensions of social inclusion.

Communications and impact:

• The candidate will work across institutional units and processes to ensure gender and GESI mainstreaming throughout, and unifying messaging across internal and external communications. She/he will work closely with the communications and GLF, resource mobilization and partnerships teams to enhance the visibility of CIFOR-ICRAF GESI expertise within our established spheres of influence as well as extend our reach into gender and identity-specific fora to bring nexus approaches with other CIFOR-ICRAF impact areas into better focus.
• She/he will develop systems for evaluation and messaging such that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” – to catalyze greater institutional impact. The candidate will build upon and amplify important institutional contributions, for example, in gender-responsive and rights-based approaches, and more recent pioneering work on gender transformative approaches to establish CIFOR-ICRAF as the “go-to place” for R&D for GTAs in food systems, forests, agroforestry, landscapes.

Strategic networking, advocacy and engagement

• The candidate will lead the development and implementation of CIFOR-ICRAFs GESI strategy and engage with a range of relevant stakeholders, targeting the most important and influential international organizations and donors, as well as civil society, academia, governments and private sector actors. This includes engagement in key international gender spheres such as the gender caucuses of the 3 UN conventions, UN women and the CG gender accelerator and with social movements such as the Stand for her Land campaign; and others in the forests, agroforests, landscapes, food systems and climate change arenas. The candidate will further endeavor to elevate other staff within the GESI team to represent CIFOR-ICRAF and their thematic expertise in strategic events and platforms.

Resource mobilization

• The candidate is expected to mobilize resources to support both gender-specific R&D and gender integration into projects as well as unsolicited funding. The candidate will lead an ambitious fundraising campaign to assure the ongoing prominence of GESI work throughout the organization, working with the research staff on strategy and proposals; courting the donor community; and fostering relationships between staff and donors. This will include capacity building amongst GESI specialists to support fundraising efforts and relevant meetings with potential funders.

Research

• The candidate may engage in specific GESI research / R&D activities as permitted by interest and funding. More strategically, the role of the GESI Director will be to identify and promote the expertise of the GESI team to contribute to research proposals, perform GESI-specific and GESI aligned research within projects and programs, develop a GESI research portfolio across all CIFOR-ICRAF impact areas, and work with MEL and Q4I teams to develop indicators and report on impacts across the portfolio.

Education, knowledge and experience

• A minimum of Master’s degree in a social science discipline or interdisciplinary degree, preferably with an emphasis on gender, equity, social justice and/or development;
• A minimum of 10 years of experience in gender and preferably at least one other GESI arena in relation to forestry, agroforestry, land or landscape management/governance, Natural Resource Management (NRM), geography, sustainable livelihoods and/or development;
• A minimum of 10 years of experience of living and working in Low- and Middle-Income Country (LMIC), is familiar with rural contexts and able to contextualize gender / GESI to local circumstances in LMIC;
• A minimum of 5-7 years of experience in project management and leadership;
• Strong skills and track record of fundraising;
• Proven understanding of the role of research in/ for development and social change;
• Ability to mobilize new clients and partners, to expand the effectiveness and impact of CIFOR-ICRAF work.
• Demonstrated experience of applying Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Impact Assessment (MELIA) on gender/ GESI / justice issues;
• Intermediate or advanced competency (level C or above) in French or Spanish.
• Experience in engagement, multistakeholder processes and/or advocacy on gender and/or GESI issues;