Director, Health Financing

The (Senior) Director will lead CHAI's health financing work across strategy, execution, and team building/management — working closely with CHAI country teams, HSS and CHAI leadership, and external partners including governments, donors, development banks, and other stakeholders.

(i) Set Strategy

• Define and evolve CHAI's HSS and financing strategy in close collaboration with the HSS country leadership, country teams, and governments — identifying where to focus, what to build, and how to sequence investment across a complex, fast-moving landscape.
• Work with country teams on context-specific programs — grounded in the specific political, fiscal, and institutional context of each focus country.
• Advise on how countries should navigate the transition away from foreign aid, working across governments and funders.
• Identify and shape opportunities to mobilize catalytic financing as part of this transition — from philanthropy, MDBs, and other sources — for the up-front investments required to build systems governments can sustain.
• Stay at the frontier of the health financing field and bring relevant insights into CHAI's programming.
• Treat strategy as a living document: build in regular review points to assess progress and make decisive calls to double down or redirect based on evidence and changing conditions.

(ii) Execute Programs and Support Program Management

• Spend time in program countries, building out new areas of work in response to government requests and key programmatic bottlenecks, working closely with CHAI’s country teams.
• Oversee delivery of CHAI's health financing programs across focus countries, working with country teams embedded and semi-embedded in governments to ensure technical quality, relevance, and measurable impact.
• Provide hands-on technical support on priority-setting and budget optimization, systems transition, health financing reforms, and domestic resource mobilization. This includes informing workforce optimization and absorption plans.
• Support the design, operationalization, and strengthening of health financing reforms. This includes going beyond making policy recommendations, to the roll-out and iteration of provider payment mechanisms. It includes working with governments to more strategically engage the private sector.
• Drive progress on budget execution — working with governments to address the flow of funds. This includes addressing critical bottlenecks in supply chain financing and broader financial management.
• Identify and develop new programmatic opportunities — scoping where CHAI can add distinctive value and building the evidence base needed to make a compelling case to governments and funders.
• Leverage new digital approaches and embed AI-powered analytics across workstreams, collaborating with CHAI’s digital health and AI teams.

(iii) Resource Mobilization and Donor Management

• Engage funders to ensure the program has the funding to match its ambition and build resilience against shifts in the global aid landscape. This includes developing high-quality proposals.
• Manage major donor relationships and program finances (working with an AD Budgeting & Reporting), ensuring high-quality reporting, proactive risk management, and disciplined deployment of resources.

(iv) External Representation and Ecosystem Influence

• Serve as an external voice for CHAI — engaging credibly and influentially with Ministries of Finance and Health, development banks, bilateral donors, and global health leadership.  
• Actively shape how the global community thinks about and supports health financing work during this time of transition. This includes building and sustaining trusted relationships across a diverse ecosystem.
• Note: This person will prioritize engagements that directly drive programmatic opportunity or advance strategic positioning, rather than spending significant proportions of their time at meetings.

(v) Team Leadership and Organizational Collaboration

• Develop and lead a high-performing and multidisciplinary team — providing the direction needed for excellent, rigorous work.
• Provide direct management and mentorship to senior team members, investing in their professional development and enabling them to lead their respective projects with confidence and autonomy.
• Foster a team culture grounded in intellectual rigour, collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Work in close partnership with CHAI country directors and country-based staff, recognizing that the strongest global strategies are built on the insights, relationships, and operational realities that staff embedded in governments bring.
• Collaborate with leaders across CHAI's digital health, workforce, supply chain, private sector, and other service delivery programs to identify synergies, share learning, and pursue integrated approaches where they strengthen impact.
• Work with program leads from disease verticals to address significant financing bottlenecks.
• Contribute to organization-wide initiatives that strengthen CHAI's culture, effectiveness, and ability to adapt to a rapidly changing global health landscape.

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree in public health, economics, public policy, or a related field strongly preferred.
• 10-15+ years of progressive experience in health financing and/or public health, with demonstrated deepening of responsibility over time.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and execute strategy in complex, ambiguous environments — translating high-level goals into actionable plans, identifying where to place bets across a fragmented landscape, and adjusting course as conditions evolve.
• Substantial professional experience and understanding of health sector dynamics in Africa and possibly Asia, with an existing network across the healthcare, finance, and development sectors.
• Strong analytics and technical depth in health financing (at least one core area).
• Excellent communicator who can distil complex technical and financial issues into clear, persuasive narratives for varied audiences — from government ministers to philanthropic funders — and who uses communication deliberately to build consensus and sustain momentum.
• Experience in donor stewardship, including leading successful proposal development and donor engagement for large, multi-year grants.
• Proven track record of building and leading teams: Setting strategy and creating the culture and systems required for a high-performing unit.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English; proficiency in French is a significant asset given CHAI's footprint.

Advantages

• Prior experience working with or within Ministries of Finance or Health.
• Experience leveraging new digital approaches for health financing, and particularly leveraging AI-advanced analytics.
• Experience in addressing health financing challenges for supply chain, workforce, and broader financial management
• Experience living and working in Africa and Asia

Attributes

• Entrepreneurial mindset: energized by building something in a less structured environment. Execution-focused, with a bias for getting things done.
• Deeply mission-driven: motivated by the prospect of helping countries build health systems that can genuinely sustain affordable, quality primary health care for the most vulnerable — and by the urgency of this moment.
• Strategically adaptive: comfortable building strategy in an unsettled and rapidly shifting landscape; able to hold a long-term vision while adjusting tactics as the context evolves.
• CHAI fit: Respecting CHAI's collaborative culture, while bringing analytical pace and rigor.
• Strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence: builds trust across diverse contexts and different players in the ecosystem.
• Intellectually curious and comfortable with ambiguity: this role requires evolving to meet a new era.
• Willingness to travel (estimated 35%).