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Bill \u0026 Melinda Gates Foundation

Program Officer, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Job

Date: Apr 10, 2014

Location: Seattle, WA, US

Division: Global Development Program

Department: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Location: Seattle

Foundation Overview

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people – especially those with the fewest resources – have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Group Summary

The Foundation's Global Development Program is working with motivated partners to create opportunities for people to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. We seek to catalyze action by others and to leverage the foundation's particular capabilities, such as taking risks to drive innovation and engaging with a wide range of partners to achieve measurable results.

Within this program, the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WSH) initiative focuses its efforts on supporting effective, sustainable and scalable ways to assist the 2.5 billion people who lack access to adequate sanitation. The WSH team launched its new strategy in July 2011 under the banner "Let's Reinvent the Toilet" and is developing an ambitious research and development program to turn this vision into a reality.

The Transformative Technologies initiative within the WSH strategy is investing in radical technological innovation that aims at step‑changes in the sustainability and profitability of sanitation. Our future investments to reinvent the toilet aim to expand and build on these with the objective of making safe and affordable toilets available to many millions of low income consumers and making neighborhoods and cities cleaner and safer. The focus will increasingly support products compliance with national and international standards and certificates; assist the development of final product specifications that are acceptable to the end users and product certification to drive access to the global market.

The key components of the Transformative Technologies initiative investment portfolio include the development, deployment, and commercialization of:

• A waterless, hygienic toilet for household use or shared use;
• New emptying technologies: Mechanical solutions which allow for dewatering biosolids onsite, de-sanding, separating trash and disinfecting filtered water, at a cost lower than current market practices to compete with manual emptiers;
• Improved waste processing solutions: Innovations in limited number of industrial technologies to process fecal sludge at neighborhood or decentralized level to recover energy (fuel, electricity, biogas, or biochar) or resources (water, fertilizer, biosolids), with the aim of generating a profitable business for operators/industries;
• Development of innovative business models to make sanitation service affordable to the majority of poor people and facilitate the adoption of appropriate innovations is a critical supporting component to our investments in new technology.

Responsibilities

• Lead an investment portfolio to complement ongoing technology development and commercialization efforts, increasing adoption and access to the global market, especially in pro-poor markets in developing countries.
• Make investments to support product compliance with national and international standards and certificates, assist in developing final product specifications acceptable to end users.
• Develop test plans, gather and distill data, disseminate findings to the wider team for review and feedback.
• Develop and lead relationships with national and international standards and certification authorities, creating certificates of conformity for Foundation-funded technologies qualified for global commercialization.
• Coordinate certification and accreditation tasks with Foundation partners.
• Work with colleagues to ensure strategic investments meet compliance requirements.
• Lead a strategic portfolio to secure access to the global market via product certification and compliance.
• Support national and international regulatory bodies to adopt or develop new certification processes that support sanitation innovation adoption.
• Develop product labels that will drive access to the global market.
• Provide technical support to Foundation partners and grantees, integrating product certification processes into project outcomes and product development cycles.
• Develop certifications and standardization criteria to guide technology development funded by the Foundation.
• Build and maintain excellent communication and relationships with national and international certification and accreditation bodies to keep the Foundation updated on new developments and product certification requirements.

Qualifications

• At least five years professional experience in fields of inspection, auditing and/or certification.
• University degree in engineering, natural sciences, MBA or other relevant disciplines.
• Excellent understanding of international standards; certification processes and organizations (example: ISO and IEC).
• Demonstrated experience in product certification to support end-user adoption and global commercialization.
• Understanding of and engagement with certification or regulatory agencies in the developing world (Africa or Asia) for several years.
• Ability to think/act like an investor.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a larger team.
• Experience working with a wide range of clients, colleagues, consultants, and partners across private, public, and NGO sectors.
• Strong analytical skills, including quantitative assessments and a focused approach to complex problems.
• Excellent negotiation skills.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills to convey complex situations in a clear, concise manner.
• Excellent command of the English language is obligatory. Additional knowledge of other modern languages is an asset.
• Demonstrated ability to work with flexibility, efficiency, and diplomacy in a fast-paced environment.
• Innovative and open-minded approach to all aspects of work. Ability to question and challenge colleagues, including managers, and partners in a constructive manner.
• Comfortable in a wide range of cultural, geographic and operational situations, demonstrating culturally sensitive behavior with a diverse range of people.
• Ability to travel up to 33% of time internationally and domestically as needs dictate.
• Impatient and optimistic.

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be contingent upon successful completion of a comprehensive background check.

Requisition Number: 4434BR

Nearest Major Market: Seattle

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