Senior Manager, Partnerships - Nairobi, Nairobi County - PULA

Description

About Pula
We are an insuretech firm that provides agriculture insurance design and execution services, specialising in index based insurance and are backed by top tier VC investors who have invested more than $25 million in the business. Since 2015 we have provided climate insurance to 19 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 13 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we've unlocked over $2.5 billion of capital from local and international insurance markets for climate risks since we started in 2015 and paid out $40.8 million to our client farmers.

According to the UN's InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall. Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.

We are a for profit organisation, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.

At Pula, our values are:

• Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done
• Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
• Have a Can do Attitude We dare to do things differently to make things work.
• We have each others' back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

Pula is proudly fast paced, constantly learning from the challenges we face and overcome. We are proudly culturally diverse but united in our ambition of continuous high-performance. By challenging ourselves we believe that we can overcome the hard problems we love solving.

What you will be doing:
Partnership and Business Development

• Identify opportunities to extend existing grants or secure new funding from current partners, and lead the development and presentation of grant proposals
• Independently work on the identification, writing, relationship building, and contracting of Pula's grant-funded projects
• Manage stakeholder relations, including donors and private/public sector partners, through a combination of in-person & hybrid meetings and in-country visits
• Work with external consultants and agencies who may be contracted to work on research initiatives and ensure there is a clear scope of work, research questions, etc
• Support the commercial team on interactions with donors

Consulting

• Identify opportunities to extend existing consulting work or secure new funding from current clients, and lead the development and presentation of client proposals
• Lead the execution of consulting projects to a high standard and retain clients for additional work.
• Support the Partnerships & Consulting team with developing client/partner-facing presentations

What you need to be successful:

• You have 10+ years of total professional experience with 5+ of these years in partnerships, business development, consulting, and/or project management.
• You can demonstrate networks and experience with Partnerships through awards generated from development agencies and institutional donors for a value of at least $500,000 over the course of your career.
• You have a strong background in partner management, successfully managing relationships with donors and clients.
• You are charismatic, confident, and trustworthy, with a personality suited to building and managing relationships with stakeholders across sectors, seniority, and cultures.
• You are tenacious, resilient, and politely persistent to get to a "yes" with partners.
• You have proven project management experience and can handle multiple projects effectively.
• You are meticulous and highly organized in planning, executing, and monitoring projects.
• You are an effective communicator with strong writing skills, capable of synthesizing information, drafting compelling proposals, and communicating ideas across diverse platforms.
• You have experience creating visually appealing presentations and communicating ideas effectively using tools like Google slides, and are fully conversant with tools such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.
• Partnerships, Business Development or Consulting experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Job creation, Financial Inclusion or related is a significant advantage.
• You can write and speak in English fluently; fluency in French is an added advantage.

What Pula will bring to the table

• Your work matters
  : At Pula, you'll shape systems that give millions of smallholder farmers access to insurance for the first time. You'll join a team that has already reached over 19 million farmers across Africa and Asia, and you'll directly contribute to scaling this impact even further.
• Career development:
  You'll be working in a high-performance environment with strong mentorship and leadership that values transparency, execution, and personal growth. As we enter our next phase of accelerated expansion, you'll naturally gain opportunities to take on new responsibilities and grow your career.
• Global recognition:
  Backed by top global investors and foundations; Pula is a solid, well-funded organization. Our work is recognized globally (from winning the Singapore FinTech Festival Award to being featured in The Economist and TED Talks) and you'll be part of a brand that is respected in the industry.
• Purpose with Rewards:
  Few opportunities combine career advancement with genuine purpose. At Pula, your work directly contributes to financial security for farmers in emerging markets, while also offering competitive pay, performance incentives, and an employee share option plan with equity upside.

To learn more about Pula you can visit
TED Talk: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding

New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them

The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It

How to apply
Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.

Pula's mission is to provide farmer resilience. To achieve this, we put our small holder farmers that use our services and the employees that provide them at the heart of everything we do. For that purpose, Pula was created to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.