Program Head - Strategy and Partnerships, Landscape Restoration

The World Resources Institute is hiring a Program Head for Strategy and Partnerships in Landscape Restoration. This role involves developing strategies to scale restoration efforts, engaging with diverse stakeholders, and unlocking public finance for restoration projects in India. The position focuses on enhancing food and water security, biodiversity, and livelihoods while addressing climate change. The job is remote, allowing candidates to work from anywhere.
Program Head - Strategy and Partnerships, Landscape Restoration

Who we are and what we do?
WRI India, an independent charity legally registered as the India Resources Trust, provides objective information and practical proposals to foster environmentally sound and socially equitable development. WRI India’s mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations. Through research, analysis, and recommendations, WRI India puts ideas into action to build transformative solutions to protect the earth, promote livelihoods, and enhance human well-being.
We are inspired by and associated with World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization. Currently over 250 researchers are working with WRI India in our offices at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Program Overview for Food, Land and Water:
WRI India’s Food, Land and Water program aims to inform India’s transition towards sustainable and resilient food and land use systems focusing on developing interdisciplinary nature-based solutions like landscape restoration, sustainable agriculture to mitigate climate impacts, enhance jobs and livelihoods and improve nutritional security. To catalyse systems, change with a focus on circular food systems in India, we also focus on developing equitable strategies to reduce food loss and food waste and mitigate climate impacts.
With broader systems change and food systems perspective, we work with diverse stakeholders like governments, businesses, civil society partners and farmer producer organizations to inform and develop land use strategies based on robust evidence and analysis to build the resilience of local communities to mitigate climate impacts, bridge capacity gaps, monitor progress, and inform a pathway to building a restoration economy for people, nature, and climate.

About your role:
Restoration is gaining momentum in India as a strategy that delivers multiple benefits, including food and water security, biodiversity enhancement, job creation, livelihood improvements and climate change mitigation and adaptation. To achieve impact at scale, restoration efforts need to make a shift from being funded by philanthropic, CSR, bilateral grants, to unlocking public finance at scale. This shift requires working on enabling conditions (policy incentives, monitoring, capacity, enabling creating of supply chains) around restoration and reducing policy barriers to restoration to have more synergistic flow of public funding building on strategic partnerships and engagement with a diversity of partners. A key focus area for the candidate would be to strengthen the engagement with the government across levels and enable the unlock of public capital in target states and landscapes.
Reporting to the Executive Program Director of the Food, Land and Water, you will grow the work around restoration, refine its strategy to scale restoration, and thought leadership and strengthen partnership and engagement for the program.

How your day will unfold:

Strengthening strategy and its delivery for restoration implementation (40%)
- Lead the design and scaling strategy for restoration, e.g., enabling conditions stream of work (around public capital, reducing barriers in supply chains) to support the restoration of landscapes in India with support from the program team,
- Explore knowledge gaps on restoration, e.g., identifying key research questions and steer research that need to be addressed. Author or co-author knowledge products (e.g., reports, briefs, data-products)
- Design monitoring strategy for enabling conditions workstream

Program Leadership, Strategy and Management (30%)
Strategy to planning
- Collaborate with program leadership to develop and refresh the program’s strategy, aligning with organizational goals and country priorities working with co-lead of the program
- Lead strategic planning, ensuring delivery of the program’s vision and goals in context of enabling conditions.
- Lead implementation of the program strategy in connection with ongoing projects on enabling conditions.
Planning to implementation
- Manage project scope and team
- Ensure compliance with reporting requirements for donors and other partners by coordinating with relevant program team members. Preparation of narrative reports and monitor budgets and indicators for ongoing projects on enabling conditions.
- Mentor, manage interdisciplinary teams, ensuring seamless collaboration and communication.
- Develop and implement operational plans and procedures that enhance program delivery.
- Lead the execution of high-priority projects, from launch to completion, ensuring adherence to timelines, scope, and quality standards.
- Oversee the management of the program’s budget with program leadership and the operations team, ensuring financial sustainability and accountability.

Partnership and engagement (30%)
- Network across sectors and engage key stakeholders in program projects especially government.
- Develop new partnerships and engagements to build and take forward program strategy especially to strengthen enabling conditions work on restoration
- Attend external meetings and travel related to ongoing projects.
- Represent the organization at events, coalitions, roundtables, and similar settings.
- Enable strategic communication on restoration internally and with external partners.

Qualifications and requirements we seek:

- Master’s degree in environment, restoration, or a related field.
- Minimum 12 years of relevant experience in strategic planning, operations management, and project leadership within the natural resource management, restoration sectors.
- Familiarity with landscape and restoration agendas, public policies, and national and international commitments.
- You have experience leading high-level research and communicating complex ideas to different audiences
- Proven ability to manage complex programs, cross-functional teams, and large-scale initiatives and budget management.
- Excellent communication, partner management, and donor engagement skills.
- Proficiency in project management tools and methodologies.
- Professional fluency in English, fluency in one more Indian language (e.g., Hindi) is an advantage.
- Strategic thinking with the ability to translate ideas into applicable plans.
- Strong leadership, team management and mentoring skills.
- Data-driven approach to decision-making and continuous improvement.
- Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills for engaging with multiple partners.

Salary and Benefits: 35,00,000 to 46,50,000 CTC Per Annum
Salary shall be commensurate with experience and skills. WRI offers a generous and comprehensive benefits package.

Location: New Delhi, India

Duration: 2 Years (extendable based on performance and project requirements). The start date is as soon as possible.
List of Documents to be attached:
• Cover letter
• Resume
Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted for interview purpose.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) @WRI India
WRI India values and promotes diversity, equity and inclusion across all areas of our work and workforce. Integrating these values into our actions fosters a progressive and collaborative culture and can also enhance our impact. It is our responsibility to create a welcoming working environment for people of diverse cultures, backgrounds and experience to learn together. We are responsible for fostering a safe and inclusive workplace where questions, concerns and information about diversity, equity and inclusion are part of our ongoing dialogue and development.
Learn more about WRI India’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Click Here
People-centric to the core:
We keep our people at the centre of everything we do - from a welcoming work environment to benefits and a culture that encourages staff to stay healthy, happy, engaged, and growing.
Some of the non-monetary benefits that our staff get:

Health benefits: We cover health insurance for you and your loved ones for up to INR 8 lakhs
Term Insurance: Our term insurance policy covers life coverage of 50 lakhs per staff member
Employee Assistance program: Promoting mental well-being and supporting staff in achieving a satisfying work-life balance
Health & Nutrition: Personalized diet recommendation from a certified dietitian based on the physical health condition and lifestyle
Flexible work schedule: Alternative work arrangements for all who are eligible by nature of their job
Learning culture: Workshops and trainings to empower staff, encourage new learning opportunities
Rest and Recharge weeks: We encourage staff to take time off to rest, rejuvenate, upskill, and pursue their interests.
Our leave policy: Avail personal time off at 36 per year, along with public holidays, maternity, paternity, and adoption leaves.
Click here to know more about our benefits Careers | WRI INDIA (wri-india.org)
Equal employment @WRI India
We believe in equal employment, it is our policy to recruit, and provide opportunities for advancement in all job classifications without regard to caste, religion, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, parental status, or disability.