Senior Officer, Advocacy - Health Product Introduction at Gates Foundation

What You'll Do


Co-develop advocacy strategies addressing financing and policy barriers to accelerate high-impact MNCH product scaling in priority geographies like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Senegal, DRC, and others.
Coordinate with governments, development partners, and advocacy stakeholders around prioritized MNCH innovations, ensuring alignment with national health strategies, optimizing domestic and external financing, and expediting regulatory approval processes.
Oversee and lead detailed micro-planning analysis to guide country scale up approaches, ensuring evidence informs policy and financing decisions.
Serve as a senior advocacy resource on new and emerging interventions and products for MNCH, linking international research and scientific expertise with national MNCH priorities and SDG 3 achievement plans.
Identify, negotiate, and oversee complex, performance-based contracts and grants that support advocacy for MNCH product introduction, ensuring high quality execution and accountability.
Manage partnerships and grantee relationships to develop collective learning, advocacy impact and accountability, including conducting site visits, convening meetings with key collaborators, and being responsible for and evaluating grant components).
Collaborate across foundation teams, and work streams to align product, policies and financing and leverage cross-sector opportunities to amplify advocacy impact between product, policy, and financing. Manage grants and partner relationships at the regional and country level to facilitate advocacy for product introduction, including building a local evidence base for effective policy and financing advocacy. Collaborate with foundation colleagues in related program areas to take advantage of cross-sector grant-making opportunities.
Collaborate with key foundation workstreams to ensure real-time alignment among product, policy, financing, and program implementation. Enhance the readiness of the national health system and its integration across the MNCH innovation agenda and ensure product introduction strategies are adapted to local contexts.
Facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration of partners across countries.
Use Foundation voice, leadership, and grant-making strategically at the country level, working closely with country offices to amplify political commitment, accelerate adoption and eliminate bottlenecks in regulatory, procurement, and financing pathways.
Represent the foundation to key government health leaders, platforms, and working groups at state, national, and regional levels.
Produce regular reporting and strategic presentations to internal partners, summarizing key developments, risks, and opportunities related to MNCH product advocacy and financing.
Support Foundation leadership preparation for high-level engagements, including developing talking points, strategy memos, and partner coordination to drive aligned messaging and influence policy agendas.


Your Experience


A minimum of 10 years of relevant experience with an advanced degree in medicine, public health, health economics, public policy, or similar fields
Exceptional knowledge, experience, and expertise in technical advocacy and communications related to products and commodities, particularly in the FP, MNCH ecosystem, and an understanding of the end-to-end pathway for product introduction to scale and the pathways for impact.
Experience communicating around policy and advocacy efforts specific to product introduction and scale, and working with governments, academic institutions, NGOs, the private sector, and professional associations preferred. Hands-on experience including interaction with senior-level policy makers, coalitions, and private sector partners.
Experience advising government, donors, implementing agencies, and other national-level partners in developing countries\Experience in commodities adoption and scale in LMIC settings is an asset
Understanding the region's health systems and the economic, social, and political factors influencing health outcomes.
In-depth experience in broader public health with a strong development orientation backed by excellent management capabilities.
Experience building partnerships and working collaboratively to meet shared/joint objectives, both internally and externally. Ability to orchestrate effective decisions across various issues and partners, assess progress, analyse gaps, and make vital changes.
Ability to navigate complexity and ambiguity effectively: Making sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems - especially in managing relations.