Regional Lead at Village Capital

Village Capital finds, trains, and invests in early-stage entrepreneurs with business solutions to major global problems. We build communities around entrepreneurs that increase opportunities for growth and success. Our peer-selected investment approach delivers strong results for early-stage businesses and investors. Village Capital builds bridges for entrepreneurs who are creating an inclusive and sustainable world. Our programs connect high potential, early-stage entrepreneurs with the people, institutions, and capital they need to succeed. Since 2009, Village Capital has supported more than 1,000 entrepreneurs through our programs, and partnered with affiliated investment funds, including VilCap Investments, that have invested seed capital in more than 90 program graduates.

Role Overview

Village Capital is looking for a Regional Lead, in Sub-Saharan Africa, to help develop and drive regional strategy and programming to support entrepreneurs across multiple sectors in the region. Here is what we are looking for:

• You are a self-starter and an insatiable learner: You stay ahead of industry trends. You find yourself reading, thinking, and talking about entrepreneurship and early-stage investing.


• You’re interested in working with the next generation of entrepreneurs: You look at a startup and think of ways that it might succeed, why it might fail, and how you could plug in to provide support. You are particularly interested in how entrepreneurs can solve the most important problems of our day.


• You’re a team player: You see your role as part of something bigger. You are able to communicate transparently and confidently with colleagues and external stakeholders and understand how your responsibilities roll up into the bigger picture.


• You are a natural connector: You will spend a lot of your time talking with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial support organizations, and investors. One of your greatest value adds to entrepreneurs will be the people you can connect them with – investors, stakeholders, potential customers.


• You’re an innovator: You are comfortable with agile working and not always having the answers. You like to try new things and learn from them.


• You are a gracious host: You anticipate others’ needs and design your actions accordingly to enable the best experience.

Responsibilities

Reporting to the Chief Program Officer, the Regional Lead will be a key member of the Global Ventures team and will be responsible for:

Program Development & Management

• Program Design & Implementation: You will have ownership of designing and executing high-quality entrepreneur support programming to maximize value to entrepreneurs, investors, and partners. You will commit to the behind-the-scenes infrastructure building and detail-oriented work that goes into program planning, problem statement development, strategy development, communication management, deliverable management and logistics, sourcing and recruitment of entrepreneurs and mentors, cohort selection and facilitation of workshops. You will work closely with other teams across the organization to customize curriculum as needed for different program structures tThis also includes a continuous examination of power dynamics across programs and initiatives, improving equitable access for entrepreneurs.


• Sourcing and Due Diligence: You will stay apprised of emerging industry and technology trends as well as trends related to entrepreneurship. This will include identifying and recruiting high-potential companies to participate in geographically and sector-specific business development and investment programs, conducting market research and analysis and conducting initial screening and due diligence on companies, and providing investment recommendations to Village Capital and our partners.


• Building Systems and Structures: You will bring a sense of structure and organization to create workflows, work with matrixed teams, and manage processes to ensure quality outputs and strong outcomes.


• Reporting: You will work across teams to compile information and write reports to be presented to relevant internal and external stakeholders.

Ecosystem Development & Management

• Ecosystem Mapping: You will build an ecosystem map of competitors and potential partners operating in the entrepreneur support and impact investment space and establish thought leadership and spread insights throughout each partner ecosystem via reports, heatmaps, blog posts, social media, emails, and videos.


• Network and Community Management: You will work with relevant team members to build up, engage and manage an already extensive network of alumni, investors, customers, and industry experts to support entrepreneurs and emerging companies working to solve problems.


• Partnership Development & fundraising: You will, along with your team, be responsible for securing the necessary resources to execute on your strategy for sub-Saharan Africa practice by building relationships with private foundations, corporations, investment funds and other sources of revenue. This includes the opportunity to design new partnerships and potentially new investment vehicles for our ventures in the region and attending fundraising activities such as sponsored or promotional events.

Regional Strategy & Communications

• Regional strategy: You will support the development and execution of an annual and multi-year strategy based on regional trends and identified market gaps.


• Communications and brand development You will support the development and management of Village Capital’s brand as a leader in ecosystem building space. You will work with the Communications team to create a communications strategy to highlight the success of VilCap’s work in the region. You will be responsible for guiding thought leadership, such as blog posts and sector research, speaking at conferences, and promoting our work on social media.

Operations

• Team Development and Management: You will manage and continue to build a team that will lead behind-the-scenes infrastructure building and detail-oriented work that goes into recruiting entrepreneurs, project management, prospective partner identification, research, and relationship management.


• Budget Management: Working with the Finance and Operations teams as well as your Partnerships liaison, you will develop and oversee budgets for all programs in your region in your assigned region.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience;


• 5 to 7 years of full-time working experience with accelerators, ecosystem building, startups, entrepreneurship, impact investing, venture capital, economic development, financial services, corporate social responsibility, or a combination of related experience and skill-sets;


• Minimum 4 years of experience managing a team or function for a similar-sized organization (or larger)


• Prior experience with a coalition and/or network building, sales, fundraising or partnership development is a plus.


• Exceptional project and program management skills; track record of delivering projects on time and on budget; experience getting results from freelancers and third-party service provider


• Strong oral and written communication skills (English)


• Established and good working relationships with organizations focused on and/or located in the region(s) to support entrepreneurs and/or deploy capital to scale impact-driven companies


• Experience working with a wide variety of external stakeholders in different countries and across time zones


• Facilitation/training skills (in-person and virtual);


• Close attention to detail;


• Humble, curious, and empathetic attitude toward learning and creating solutions


• Ability to manage complex multi-month projects


• Ability to flourish with minimal guidance and be proactive;


• Ability and willingness to travel


• Authorization to work in Kenya

Benefits

• Team culture that values experimentation, innovation, taking initiative, performance and making things better, including how we work together and create a sense of belonging for all team members


• Fulfilling, mission-driven purpose, including the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs around the world


• Evolving hybrid work model, accommodating remote and/or office (depending on location) preferences


• Annual performance bonus program


• Generous holiday and paid time off policy


• Annual professional development reimbursement program

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