Role Specification: Communications Director

Location: Flexible, with a strong preference for Kenya or Uganda; open to candidates elsewhere who can overlap with African business hours zones (e.g., Europe or US East Coast).

About Living Goods

Living Goods is a global organization headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, that’s dedicated to ensuring women and children don’t die from easily preventable and treatable diseases by providing high-quality, life-saving health care at their doorsteps.

For the past 15 years, Living Goods has partnered with African governments to ensure that community health workers (CHWs) have the tools, support, and knowledge they need to be successful and reach their full potential. They support networks of trusted CHWs to transform health outcomes for women and children and work to advance system change by partnering with governments to sustainably lead. Living Goods also focus on ensuring CHWs are treated as essential health workers who should be digitized, equipped, supervised, and compensated—so they can make the greatest impact—and harness community-level data to transform health systems. They focus on treating some of the deadliest but most easily treatable deadly childhood diseases, supporting women of reproductive age with pregnancy support and family planning, and ensuring every child is fully vaccinated. With operations in Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso (and a small support office of 15 people in the US), in 2021 Living Goods supported more than 11,000 CHWs to assist 8.5 million people.

About the Role:

Living Goods is looking for its next Director of Communications who will lead the planning and execution of its global communication strategy and ensure that it is well synchronized with both organizational and country-level goals, as well as a wide array of departmental priorities. The Director of Communications must be a proactive and hands-on strategic leader who will work across key teams at Living Goods to strengthen the organizational brand and external positioning, enhance the visibility of programs and key learnings, ensure consistency of messaging in an ever-evolving context, and help maximize engagement and thought leadership both internally and externally around the importance of Living Good’s approaches to advancing community health.

In strong partnership with the global and country-level Advocacy, Business Development, and Programs teams, the Communications Director will use a wide variety of communications tools and tactics to help the organization make the case for prioritizing and investing in community health and primary health care, elevating Living Goods’ thought leaders (and preparing them for the public eye), and inspiring and influence funders. In this role, the incumbent will grow Living Goods’ reputation as a partner of choice in supporting African governments to invest in and professionalize their community health workers—with the digital tools, training, medicines, supervision, and compensation they need—and to strengthen the broader systems in which they work. This position will report to and work closely with the US Executive Director, sit on our Global Management Team, and will be a key collaborator and advisor to our senior management team and external partners.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategy Development and Implementation:

• Develop and execute a communications strategy and an annual plan that ensures the power of communications can maximize the success of Living Good’s work and enable the amplification of the organization’s impact in their countries of operation (Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso), regionally and globally.
• Proactively propose and develop communication plans, in line with Living Good’s Vision and Strategic Plan, to leverage organizational strengths, identify opportunities in the field that Living Goods is well positioned to pursue, and bring new ideas to the organization.
• Develops and implement external communication strategies that expand brand awareness and elevate our leaders.

Team Leadership:

• Lead and mentor a team of at least three communications professionals based in East Africa who develop global communications and support country teams with strategic communications.
• Oversee several key internal communications channels including internal newsletters, social engagement tools, and more, and provide technical leadership to an internal communications staff and/or consultants.
• Support in managing external support from consultants and other vendors for photography, editing, graphic design, and more.
• Manage communication team members’ performance, development needs, and career growth.
• Develop strategic communications work plans in support of empowering CHW’s programmatic objectives and guide day-to-day project implementation.

Strengthen Organizational Brand and Voice:

• Oversee and advise on organizational messaging and positioning, develop and update talking points for externally facing staff, and oversee the development of all Living Goods branded materials, including digital, video, audio, and print content.
• Ensure new and existing staff are sufficiently trained to accurately speak about Living Goods’ work and strategy.
• Refine organizational messaging and positioning, public relations/earned media, website content, social media, email marketing, events support, thought leadership, and collateral material development, and identify strategic opportunities to partner with donors, governments, other implementing partners, and advocacy coalitions.

Communications Advisory:

• Collaborate with executive leadership to develop key internal and external communications such as speeches and presentations and lead dissemination across various communication channels.
• Coach and train senior staff to improve communications capacity across the organization.
• If and as needed, support change management and crisis management needs with a critical comms lens.

Internal and External Stakeholder Engagement:

• Partner with Living Good’s community of stakeholders—including staff, donors, community health movement partners, and media—at global, regional, and country levels to advance our movement.
• Grow media coverage for Living Goods with stakeholders including government partners, and community health in targeted media outlets, especially in-country. This will include coverage in print and digital media.
• Coordinate closely with the People and Culture team to ensure regular and meaningful communication with Living Good’s 400+ staff. This will also include advising on strategy, platforms, and tools to help increase staff engagement and improve knowledge management and learning.
• Work with Business Development, Advocacy, and Programs teams to plan and attend events that connect Living Goods with target audiences and help move the sector forward.

Does this sound like you?

• A demonstrable commitment to international development and global health with at least 15 years of experience in communications with progressive levels of responsibility in public health or another international development sector, and/or experience supporting communications for an African government agency.
• At least 5 years of experience leading and inspiring high-performing teams, managing direct reports, and working in a matrixed organization.
• Extensive hands-on experience using and planning a wide array of communications tools and strategies including print publications, digital and social media, videography, website management, public relations, and graphic design, and have proven success in devising effective, persuasive messaging and positioning for various audiences. Proficient in the MS Office Suite and basic experience with the Adobe Creative Cloud preferred but not required.
• Ability to translate complex impact evaluations, dense donor updates, and success stories into concise key messages, readable reports, and compelling narratives.
• Stellar attention to detail and a love for good grammar. English fluency is required; Kiswahili and/or French language skills are a plus, but not required.
• Leadership acumen and strategic ability to be a thought partner to, and act on behalf of, the Executive Team and Global Management Team.
• Results-driven professional with an ability to balance the big picture, strategic thinking with tactical productivity, and attention to detail.
• A forward thinker who excels in a fast-paced environment and enjoys formulating new strategies, solving problems, and thinking about new and better ways to do things internally and externally.
• Ability to infuse others with a passion for communications and are capable of accurately representing the organization externally with the media and key partners.
• An exceptional relationship builder, increasing rapport, trust, and transparency across a diverse and growing community of internal and external stakeholders.
• Eager to work with people of different cultures and different sectors: governments, the non-profit sector, the public health community, and private donors. Experience working in a global organization situated in one or more of the countries where Living Goods has country offices is an added advantage.