Senior Program Manager

About Quest Alliance:

At Quest Alliance, we transform learning ecosystems through education technology, capacity building, and collaboration to build 21st-century skills for learners and facilitators

We are a not-for-profit trust that focuses on research-led innovation and advocacy in the field of teaching and learning. We engage with educators, civil society, government institutions and corporate organizations to demonstrate and enable scalable and replicable solutions in school education and vocational training

At Quest you will get the opportunity to apply your skills and contribute to addressing issues around quality education and skills training. The organization gives you the space to learn and grow in a fun and engaging environment. We have an eclectic group of people working at Quest drawn from diverse disciplines including Education, Technology, Design, Youth Development and Business.

About the Role :

The State Lead will lead the intervention in the state by working closely with a team of Education Specialist Program Managers, coordinators and officers. The State lead will be responsible for ensuring implementation of all project deliverables. We are looking for an experienced person who has prior experience having worked in Education programmes while having a perspective on the content thematics (coding/ computational skills) of the program. The role will anchor all govt relations, and oversee content development, and capacity-building programmes. The manager should be well versed in understanding analysis and drive reviews using the same.

The position will be responsible for developing and managing relationships with non-profits, policy makers and govt. Stakeholders at the state and district level.

State Strategy - Design, Operationalisation and Review

• Anchor the state strategy aligning it to program and organizational priorities and systems change lens
• Develop the state plan and ensure its operationalisation and achievement of goals with quality
• Ensure all state strategies have clear operational plans detailed out as quarterly milestones and monthly plans (curriculum development, chatbot, capacity building)
• Develop the long term state strategy and plan with clear budgets and team structures for the state from 3-5 year lens
• Support the BD team with proposal development, donor engagement and identifying state specific fundraising opportunities
• Monthly field visits to interact with the learners, teachers, headmasters and district officials to gauge the effectiveness of the program from the stakeholder lens

Project and Budget Management

• Contribute to overall program processes - funder engagement, research, communication and dissemination
• Ensure project deliverables are met as per program plan and donor commitments
• Ensure donor reporting happens as per timelines and with quality - capturing project learning and insights
• Ensure financial forecasting is in place for each project and the spent plan is as per forecast (no underspent/overspent) with maximum focus on the key constituency when it comes to prioritizing spent decisions
• Anchor the financial management to ensure audit compliance, review of the monthly project spent report to check for consistency and discrepancies

Advocacy and Thought Leadership

• Identify opportunities at the state level from an advocacy and strategic partnership lens to deepen Quest’s thought leadership work
• Drive the advocacy agenda for the state as per the program plan - relationship building with Andhra SSA and SCERT and other relevant departments
• Develop a clear action plan for advocacy for mainstreaming the curriculum in the education ecosystem and facilitating policy level change,
• Ensure every 6 months JPRMS are conducted and become strategic spaces for multi stakeholder dialogue - including the donor and the govt officials
• Participate actively in all consortiums and external forums as Quest’s representatives and integrate the org agenda into the different spaces
• Streamline the planning, implementation and review process with the partners in Andhra Pradesh

Knowledge Partnerships

• Anchor the program strategy and execution for knowledge partnerships
• Align the KP strategy with the org strategy
• Manage the IELE team

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Ensure that the team has a good understanding of the monitoring tools and dashboards
• Ensure that the data coming in from monitoring tools is reviewed jointly by the team and is integrated in reviews with partners and within the team
• Ensure that the quality of monitoring data coming in is of good quality and leading to insights and reflections on the program strategy
• Ensure state reviews are streamlined with the thematic leads and other relevant stakeholders and become spaces for reflections and deepening the synergy between org, program and state strategy, ensure data and qualitative insights are being used to drive reflection and deepen the strategic thinking

Team Building and Development

• Invest in creating learning opportunities for the team to learn from other teams in the program and in Quest
• Ensure participation of team members in program and organization related team spaces/forums/processes
• Build a culture of open communication, critical thinking and agency within the team
• Ensure that the team members understand the big picture - org priorities and program strategies and its alignment with state/thematic strategy

Required skills and Experience:

• Minimum 7-8 years of work experience, in implementing blended learning content for school-related projects
• Hands-on experience with working on coding/ computational skills/ STEM and life and career skills for school students
• Prior experience working in government schools and managing programmes at scale
• Prior experience in facilitating training and workshops for the govt. Teachers and officials at the district/state level
• Willingness to learn and influence prevalent practices in the education ecosystem
• Deep understanding of the National Education Policy and State Curriculum Framework
• Excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills in English and Odia (preferred)
• Excellent IT skills
• Willingness to travel extensively
• Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with other teams

Salary: