Regional Emergency Response Advisor (English-Speaking Africa)

Role Overview

Based in Nairobi, the STRIDES Regional Emergency Response Advisor guides outbreak preparedness and response across English-speaking African country programs, helping teams turn incident management plans into coordinated action. The advisor connects technical, operations, finance, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and country teams so response priorities, staffing, spending, and reporting remain aligned; experience with high-consequence pathogens, including viral hemorrhagic fevers, is especially relevant.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead preparedness and outbreak response in coordination with country incident management systems, STRIDES protocols, and project objectives; organize daily work across technical, operational, and administrative teams.
• Maintain a clear picture of response progress by consolidating field updates and coordinating situation reports, activity summaries, milestones, deliverables, and resource-use data with MEL and leadership teams.
• Standardize response tools across the country portfolio, including reporting formats, deployment trackers, dashboards, logs, SOPs, guidance notes, and job aids; work with Digital Transformation and Technology colleagues on tracking systems.
• Review response performance and project implementation, identify operational or technical gaps, and incorporate evidence and lessons learned into practical guidance, improved processes, and future response plans.
• Guide the technical design and delivery of project activities, country work plans, technical work plans, scopes of work, and budgets, ensuring that outputs meet agreed timelines and donor or client requirements.
• Coordinate country-office requests for technical assistance; mentor and train staff and partners, and provide direction to junior technical colleagues, consultants, and other implementation teams as assigned.
• Work with finance and operations teams on response budgets, forecasts, spending, emergency procurement, consultant deployments, surge staffing, and solutions to resource constraints.
• Develop and review technical reports, briefs, presentations, research materials, and after-action documentation; contribute technical leadership to proposal development, donor engagement, partnerships, and external representation.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Master’s degree or international equivalent in a relevant field, such as health, life or social sciences, international development, communications, education, environmental studies, or knowledge and information services.
• At least eight years of relevant experience implementing large technical projects or programs, including work in outbreak preparedness or emergency response. Direct experience with high-consequence pathogens is particularly valuable.
• Demonstrated ability to provide technical assistance and capacity building, manage complex work plans, and contribute to business development within the relevant technical field.
• Experience preparing scopes of work, deliverables, technical reports, proposals, budgets, and donor or client updates, with sound understanding of project operations and resource tracking.
• Previous work with an NGO, government agency, or private organization; international or U.S. program development or management experience is preferred.
• Strong planning, coordination, problem-solving, writing, presentation, and people-development skills, including the ability to manage competing priorities and guide colleagues across teams and locations.
• Fluent spoken and written English and the host-country language. Swahili, Hausa, Arabic, or another language used in the region is an advantage.
• Proficiency with standard Microsoft Office applications and relevant project-tracking tools; project management certification is preferred.