Chief Program Officer

Key Responsibilities

Program Strategy and Delivery

• Lead the strategy and implementation of all programs across all geographies, ensuring consistency, quality, and alignment with SHOFCO's organizational priorities
• Own delivery against SHOFCO's multi-year commitments across IIVC, YVE, and all program areas, ensuring that reported results are accurate and that targets are met or exceeded
• Work alongside the COO to identify and resolve delivery bottlenecks, risks, and operational challenges in real time
• Ensure ethical, accountable, and community-centered delivery across all sites, with safeguarding embedded in every intervention
• Scale the SUN organizing platform into new counties and communities while protecting the depth of trust and member ownership that makes it effective
• Convert community scale into influence: ensure SUN's 2 million members translate into a coordinated, credible advocacy force shaping policy, budgets, and service delivery at county and national level
• Build SHOFCO's policy and government-engagement capability so that programmatic evidence feeds directly into advocacy positions, with organized communities driving the conversation

Program Quality and Impact

• Establish and lead a culture of continuous improvement across all program areas
• Define and own clear performance metrics and outcomes for every program, tied directly to multi-year funder commitments and SHOFCO's strategic targets
• Use SHOFCO's MEL infrastructure (approximately 20,000 interviews per quarter, 15 large-scale surveys annually, research partnerships with Oxford, Busara, KEMRI, IDInsight, and others) to improve delivery approaches, not just report on them
• Lead regular performance reviews to assess progress, identify gaps, and drive concrete improvements
• Ensure that reported results meet the standards for accuracy and credibility that major funders including CIFF and the Mastercard Foundation require

Team Leadership and Management

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of program directors across Education, Gender, WASH, Health, and SUN
• Build strong leadership capacity within program teams, with clear accountability and ownership at every level of the organization
• Oversee recruitment, onboarding, and retention across a large, multi-site program workforce spanning 40 counties
• Foster a culture of ownership, execution, and learning across all teams
• Create clear structures for communication, decision-making, and escalation across geographies

Financial Management and Program Sustainability

• Oversee program budgets across a portfolio that currently includes two $60M flagship programs, in close partnership with Finance
• Ensure strong financial discipline, identifying variance early and managing resources efficiently across all geographies
• Provide accurate and timely reporting on program performance and financial status to funders, the board, and senior leadership
• Ensure programs are delivered in a financially sustainable and operationally efficient manner

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

• Own SHOFCO's MEL function, setting the standard for data quality, evidence generation, and accountability that a movement serving 2.5 million people requires
• Ensure robust systems for data collection, verification, and analysis, including baselines, results frameworks, data verification plans, and integrated reporting dashboards, so that reported results are accurate and defensible
• Translate data into insights that change how programs are designed and delivered, not only how they are reported to funders
• Strengthen systems for capturing and sharing learning across teams and geographies
• Ensure program outcomes are clearly documented and communicated to funders, partners, and government counterparts

Integration and Coordination

• Deepen coordination across program areas so that the person receiving services experiences SHOFCO as one integrated offer, not five separate programs
• Ensure alignment between program teams, operations, and other internal functions
• Support integrated, community-centered delivery approaches that treat the household, not the intervention, as the unit of change

Government Partnership and Funder Reporting

• Maintain strong working relationships with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, county water authorities, and other government counterparts whose systems SHOFCO programs operate within or alongside
• Provide the Advancement team with accurate, timely, and complete program data and evidence to support funder reporting and donor communications; the CPO is the source of the evidence, not the lead on its external presentation

The Person We're Looking For

• SHOFCO is looking for a deeply technical program strategist/operator who has built their career running complex, multi-sector delivery at scale in Kenya. This is a role defined by execution, financial discipline, and evidence rigour. Candidates whose primary strength is fundraising, external relations, or advocacy are unlikely to be the right fit.
• Minimum 10 years of senior experience in program management and delivery in East Africa, with a demonstrated track record managing complex, multi-sector programs at scale across multiple geographies; previous C-suite or equivalent senior leadership experience preferred
• Proven ability to manage large program budgets across multiple funders and reporting frameworks; hands-on experience overseeing budgets of comparable scale to IIVC and YVE (each approximately $60M) is a strong advantage
• Technically proficient in monitoring, evaluation, and learning: experience designing and running rigorous MEL systems, including results frameworks, data verification plans, baselines, and reporting dashboards; must be comfortable interrogating data directly, not just receiving summaries
• Proven track record managing large, geographically dispersed teams with clear outcomes, accountability structures, and strong retention
• Deep knowledge of Kenya's government structures from national level through county and sub-county, and the ability to build operational partnerships with Ministry counterparts in Education, Health, and Water that support SHOFCO program delivery
• Experience working directly in Kenya's informal settlements or underserved rural communities; this is not a preference but a near-requirement for someone who will be accountable for programs running at community level across 40 counties
• Experience in community organizing, civic mobilization, or community-led service delivery is strongly preferred, given that SUN is both SHOFCO's largest program and its theory of change

End Date June 20th  2026.