Operations Programme Officer

Bridge International Academies is transforming education by attacking one of the emerging world’s biggest problems: inadequate access to and quality of education for the children of families living on less than $2/day. As of January 2013, Bridge is operating more than 130 academies in Kenya with 50,000 pupils. Bridge is one of the fastest growing education companies in the world with plans to open 100 new academies in Kenya alone in 2013; and aggressive global expansion planned for 2013 and beyond.

Bridge utilizes a research-proven, scripted-learning education methodology coupled with big data (all teachers have tablets for instruction, assessment, and data-gathering) to profitably deliver high quality education at less than $6 per child per month.

Bridge is a for-profit company that deeply believes that financially sustainable solutions are the long-term answer to development in emerging countries. The Company is backed by top-tier, global venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates (the largest VC firm in the world), Omidyar Network, Khosla Ventures, and Learn Capital.
Bridge International Academies offers a tremendous opportunity to grow with one of the world’s most exciting, ambitious, and socially conscious companies, with leadership roles available across a number of competencies and geographies. We look forward to getting to know you!

OPPORTUNITY AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Operations is at the very heart of everything Bridge must do to provide our customers with the highest level of service. At one point or another, the work product of every team at Bridge (from curriculum to technology) must be operationalized, every day, by this team. In order to do this at scale, with efficacy and cost-efficiency while maintaining high levels of customer service, the Operations team must develop, refine, execute and measure team and company success given performance of complex sets of processes and systems, and achieving key indicator targets.

Amongst a small team of Operations Programme Officers, you will be responsible for the design and coordinated execution of a significant portion of the “programme” of operations.

As an Operations Programme Officer, you will be responsible for the development, efficacy analysis, and refinement of highly effective and efficient processes and systems for executing on all core academy-level and direct support and oversight of our academies.

Be responsible and accountable for the coordinated execution or delivery of often multi-team, cross departmental systems and processes. Each Operations Programme Officer will focus on a specialization within operations, including:
Customer acquisition, billing/payments, payment compliance, parent and community engagement
Supply chain, inventory management, forecasting, and expense management (budgeting, cost-savings, expense processing)
Personnel Management (staff attendance, payroll, onboarding/disciplinary actions/exiting processes, managing & forecasting staffing needs, substitute and backup pools)
Instructional delivery and operational systems oversight and compliance,
All of these programme areas are critical to the effective management of academy operations, where success is measured by:
customer satisfaction
target pupil to teacher ratios across each academy and the whole network
academy profitability
staff satisfaction and turnover
cost of headquarters support per pupil
educational outcomes as measured by academic testing programme
Bridge International Academies is already the largest multi-unit operation in Kenya in terms of number of geographically distributed business units. The challenge for Operations Programme Officers is not only to operate at this scale, but to continue to drive radically effective delivery of a complex education service and thus customer satisfaction while maintaining and improving both unit profitability and minimal support overhead costs. All while working in some of the most demanding and challenging neighborhoods and communities in the world!

This is a job for someone who has the ability to drive and demand operational excellence from large and diverse teams, while having a creative and agile approach to problem solving, a data-driven systems orientation to complex problems, and most importantly, a passion and relentless focus on customer satisfaction.

While our customer base lives well below the poverty-line, our parents are amongst the pickiest and demanding customers for any business. Exceeding their expectations while maintaining rigid margins and operational efficiencies is one of the most exciting and rewarding challenges that our Operations Programme Officer will face.

EXPERIENCE PROFILE
- Work experience in a highly operational role in a data-driven, customer-focused environment
-Experience in large-scale retail, consumer product or service industry a plus
- Record of building data-driven operational systems
- Work experience, preferably in operations, as an employee at any company that has rapidly grown in headcount and number of locations, e.g., large scale retail
- Work experience in emerging markets
- Work experience drastically improving the productivity and reducing cost of a product or service
- Work experience managing and coordinating several teams to deliver on a tight schedule
- Record of strong academic performance from a leading undergraduate institution Nairobi, KE

www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

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