Program Officer, Immunization Country Advocacy

**The Foundation**

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

**The Team**

The mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation's work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation's objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation's resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage diverse partners and promote innovative solutions that advance our program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs and Foundation Communications to build the environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives.

The Program Advocacy and Communications (PAC) team works in partnership with program teams and other teams in Global Policy and Advocacy (GPA) to achieve their policy and finance goals by:

- Developing and coordinating the execution of advocacy and communications strategies.
- Leveraging leadership and foundation voice to implement advocacy strategies.
- Developing and managing a grant portfolio dedicated to achieving advocacy outcomes.
- Directly advocating with sector leaders, influencers, media, and government officials in order to achieve advocacy outcomes.
- Leading issue-specific communications in service of advocacy goals.
- Developing policy recommendations or proposals in partnership with programmatic and regional offices.

**Your Role**

The **Program Officer (PO), Immunization Country Advocacy** supports the development and implementation of strategies for the foundation’s country-level advocacy and communications efforts and manages a portfolio of grants and contracts requiring skills in partners engagement, grant management, and monitoring and evaluation. As an advisor on critical initiatives at country level, the PO will be responsible for supporting cross-foundation country strategies aligned to government priorities and implementing components of these strategies in a set of focus geographies, particularly priorities related to strengthening of immunization systems and polio eradication efforts. The PO will also contribute to the continued development of the team’s strategic vision, while partnering closely with the rest of the team and team leadership to set the overall strategy and goals for the team.

This is an **18-month limited-term position**. The postholder will be based in **Johannesburg** and will report to the Deputy Director, Vaccine Advocacy and the Director, Africa Program Advocacy and Communications.

**What You'll Do**

The PO will manage an advocacy body of work to generate and support awareness and political commitment to immunization, mobilize domestic resources (where feasible), improve country-level partnerships, and generate necessary policy changes to achieve improvements across focus geographies (largely African continent). The PO will work in partnership with the foundation’s Africa Regional Office (ARO) and the Polio, Immunization, Enteric Diarrheal Disease, and Pneumonia PAC team based in Seattle, to drive political attention to routine immunization, the zero-dose agenda, and key high-impact vaccines including measles.

**1. Core Responsibilities**:

- Support the development of and implementation of the strategy to achieve the foundation’s programmatic objectives.
- Manage a diverse and inclusive global portfolio of grants and contracts to advance the communications and advocacy outcomes.
- Oversee agency and consultant support.
- Engage with internal and external expert advisors.
- Coordinate efforts with the program team and regional advocacy and communications colleagues.
- Support the foundation’s efforts to identify communications risks and develop strategies, in coordination with grantees and partners, to mitigate those risks.
- Help to identify, build, and manage partnerships and alliances to advance and refine policy, advocacy, and communications strategies based on technical priorities to ensure alignment with other advocacy efforts.
- Consul