Director, Climate (Cities, Transport, Air Quality, Cooling)
The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, United Kingdom
Job Description
A senior member of CIFF’s Climate Programme team, leading on a number of high profile and significant portfolios and accountable for strategy development and programmatic implementation.
This includes, but is not limited to, being CIFF’s leader on air quality, on the decarbonisation of transport and of cities, and on the intersection of all three taking a long-term view on what strategies, solutions, and partnerships are needed to deliver accelerated and reinforcing action; and oversight of CIFF’s global work on cooling.
CIFF is an evolving organization and priorities adapt with the latest evidence and needs of the community and the wider philanthropic sector. This role will require the ability to evolve and flex with that, stretching and developing existing portfolio areas, fostering meaningful and innovative connections with other portfolios and taking on other portfolio responsibilities as required.
The role is required to provide world class thought-leadership, innovation and connectivity across internal and external strategies and partners, while being grounded in implementation detail and political and economic realities.
The role will include representing CIFF at Board level with some of our major strategic partners and to pursue co-funding relationships for this and CIFF’s wider portfolio to leverage in more resources.
Role’s responsibilities
Strategy amp; planning
- Direct CIFF’s global strategies related to clean air, sub-national climate action (esp. cities), and transport decarbonisation - uniquely positioned to see the intersection between these three areas and opportunities this presents.
- Oversight of CIFF’s international cooling work including CIFF’s global partners on HFC phase-down and connectivity across CIFF’s regional work and partners.
- Provide strategic leadership, working alongside CIFF’s global grantees, CIFF’s regional teams, partners, and the wider funder community in the areas of clean air, cities and sub-national, transport and cooling.
- Develop new strategies, opportunities, capacity/skills and partners needed to deliver accelerated action in the next 3-5years. For illustration, this could include but not be limited to: developing CIFF’s work in shipping and aviation; deepening CIFF’s sub-national work beyond cities (e.g. states, provinces, regions), covering planning action and accountability; extending air quality work; using air quality as a bridge to strengthening the intersection between the climate and health communities more broadly; deepening CIFF’s cooling work to ensure an equity focus.
- Lead the preparation and presentation of high-quality analysis and insight for the CIFF Board/ Trustees, as required, to support determining future strategic priorities and setting operational plan.
- Lead the production of programme strategy and the associated evidence base, guiding and coaching other members of the climate team to provide relevant inputs, prior to a proposal’s submission for approval.
Programme development, delivery amp; performance
- Personally manage a portfolio of live programmes in priority CIFF strategy areas, with a value c. $70m including some of CIFF’s long-standing partners and a high-impact funder collaborative as well as developing an active pipeline of potential opportunities in accordance with the sector priorities and plan. This involves overseeing the strategic relationship with partners (including Board-level representation) as well as being accountable for and understanding the specific details of the programme objectives and progress against delivery.
- Lead CIFF’s overall portfolio approach to clean air, cities and transportation, providing direction to regional and sectoral teams, partners strategies (including specific investments in India and China and indirect investments across Europe, Strategic Communications, Litigation and Finance) to capture opportunities, understand and address barriers, share learnings and advise on course-correction.
- Lead CIFF’s global cooling work and cooperate with regional and sectoral teams, partners strategies (including specific investments in India and China and indirect investments in Finance) to capture opportunities, understand and address barriers, share learnings and advise on course-correction.
- Maximise the value of CIFF’s cross-cutting investments through well-coordinated engagement/feedback with the wider CIFF Climate team, and by providing value-adding insights and support to CIFF’s partners and networks (including new and existing funders) to enable them to flourish.
- Against key corporate and / or sector team indicators and targets, monitor and report internally on the performance of the strategy portfolio and individual programmes; and draw out insights and analysis from this reporting about the portfolio and sector’s performance.