Head of Impact

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Mauritius, +1 more state.

📋 Description

• Establish the trust infrastructure necessary for ALG's next phase of growth, including the methodologies, systems, validation partnerships, dashboards, governance, and public-facing evidence required to substantiate our impact claims under scrutiny.

• Develop and take ownership of ALG’s impact methodology, encompassing strategies for data collection, verification, sampling, extrapolation, attribution, contribution, confidence intervals, error margins, data quality, and limitations.

• Set the standards for internal claims at ALG, determining what can be shared with donors, what requires disclaimers, and what is ready for external publication or independent validation.

• Expand ALG’s impact narrative beyond immediate placement statistics to include aspects like income lift, economic mobility, promotions, entrepreneurship, household uplift, family support, resilience, and long-term career progression.

• Enhance internal alignment regarding core impact definitions, metrics, data sources, reporting standards, and evidence thresholds, ensuring that leadership, fundraising, product, and program teams operate from a unified source of truth.

• Design and execute a thorough research and evaluation agenda, including randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental studies, tracer studies, longitudinal research, employer studies, learner surveys, and mixed-methods evaluations.

• Determine the appropriate research methods for various programs, geographies, and questions, balancing rigorous standards with the practical needs of a rapidly scaling organization.

• Forge partnerships with credible external validators, researchers, economists, evaluation firms, academic institutions, and research laboratories to bolster public and donor confidence in ALG’s impact.

• Develop a strategic roadmap for when, where, and how ALG should seek external validation, publish findings, commission independent evaluations, or subject its methodologies to external review.

• Ensure that external validation efforts are directly tied to organizational learning, fundraising, program enhancement, and public trust, rather than being conducted for their own sake.

• Collaborate with Data, Product, Engineering, Learning, Community, and Operations teams to integrate impact measurement throughout the learner journey, from registration and baseline assessments to program completion, job transitions, long-term outcomes, and alumni progression.

• Enhance data pipelines and verification systems across surveys, platform data, CRM tools, employer feedback, relationship manager inputs, alumni updates, financial or KYC rails, LinkedIn/digital trace data, and other pertinent sources.

• Establish quality assurance and governance systems that ensure impact data is audit-ready, including audit trails, anomaly detection, dashboard health checks, data dictionaries, internal controls, documentation, and clear accountability for core metrics.

• Make certain that dashboards and data products are reliable, donor-friendly, methodologically sound, and capable of differentiating between actuals, estimates, projections, and externally validated outcomes.

• Collaborate with technical teams to ensure that impact data is actionable for decision-making, not merely for reporting, providing predictive insights, segmentation, learner support interventions, and program improvements.

• Create donor-facing and public-facing materials that clearly articulate ALG’s evidence standards, data collection methods, verification processes, sampling strategies, extrapolation reasoning, audit protocols, and methodological limitations.

• Partner with Fundraising and Partnerships to develop credible impact resources for major donors, institutional funders, governments, employers, and strategic partners.

• Produce or oversee white papers, methodology briefs, materials for the board, impact reports, evidence packs for donors, and thought leadership on ALG’s approach to economic mobility, AI-era workforce development, youth employment, entrepreneurship, household uplift, and sustainable career resilience.

• Lead a practical learning agenda identifying the highest-value questions ALG must address to enhance outcomes, bolster funder confidence, and scale responsibly.

• Convert impact data into actionable insights that enhance learner experience, program design, community support, employer engagement, fundraising efforts, and long-term outcomes.

• Lead and strengthen the Impact Team, fostering a culture that is rigorous, agile, transparent, ethical, analytical, and closely aligned with organizational strategy.

• Develop the team’s capabilities in impact evaluation, data quality, analytics, survey design, storytelling, research partnerships, donor materials, and product collaboration.

• Establish operating rhythms that ensure the Impact Team is proactive, responsive, and integrated throughout the organization rather than functioning solely as a retrospective reporting unit.

• Act as a senior advisor to leadership on impact claims, data risks, evidence quality, external validation, donor diligence, and public communications.

• Introduce rigor without rigidity, structure without bureaucracy, and external credibility without impeding ALG’s entrepreneurial agility.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 10 years of relevant experience in impact evaluation, applied research, economics, workforce development, education outcomes, labor market analytics, social impact strategy, data science, or a related discipline.

• Profound expertise in rigorous impact methodologies, encompassing RCTs, quasi-experimental methods, causal inference, longitudinal studies, tracer studies, sampling, survey design, mixed-methods research, and evaluation design.

• Experience in designing, managing, commissioning, or collaborating on external evaluations with academic researchers, research organizations, foundations, multilaterals, or independent evaluators.

• Strong understanding of education-to-employment transitions, workforce development, economic mobility, youth employment, entrepreneurship, income uplift, household outcomes, or labor market transitions.

• High data fluency, including proficiency in working with dashboards, data pipelines, data warehouses, CRM systems, survey platforms, product analytics, and data quality processes.

• Ability to translate complex research and methodologies into clear and credible materials for donors, boards, executives, governments, employers, and public audiences.

• Experience in cross-functional collaboration with product, data, engineering, operations, learning, fundraising, communications, and senior leadership teams.

• Strong written communication skills, demonstrated by the ability to produce methodology notes, donor briefs, board materials, impact reports, white papers, and thought leadership pieces.

• Excellent judgment regarding evidence quality, including the discernment to know when to employ gold-standard evaluation methods, when to use expedited pragmatic approaches, and how to communicate uncertainty or limitations.

• Proven capability to lead teams, build systems, navigate ambiguity, and operate efficiently in fast-paced, entrepreneurial settings.

• Strong ethical foundation regarding data privacy, consent, responsible AI, equity, transparency, and the risks associated with overstating impact.

• A proactive approach paired with the discipline to construct systems that are credible, auditable, and trusted.

🏝️ Benefits

• Opportunities for professional development.

• Flexible work arrangements.