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Vice President - Research Advisory & Practice

Busara· Research Advisory and Practice – Advisory
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Hybrid (Nairobi)Full-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Senior executive role leading Busara’s Practice areas, overseeing research, advisory, and practice strategy, delivery excellence, and partnerships to ensure high-quality, scalable, and financially sustainable impact.

Responsibilities

  • Define and lead Busara’s overall research, advisory & practice strategy across sectors and regions in alignment with Busara’s overall organizational strategy
  • Ensure coherence and integration across practices, geographies, and portfolios
  • Identify and develop new practice areas, service lines, and strategic opportunities in development and adjacent sectors
  • Translate research, delivery experience, and learning into scalable tools, frameworks, and approaches to strengthen institutional adoption
  • Design and model the norms that ensure different portfolios operate as a unit towards a singular mission
  • Ensure the overall sustainability of every practice area, measured against revenue, margin, utilization, share of practice partnerships and overall contribution to Busara's mission
  • Own revenue growth, margin performance, utilization, and renewal targets across practice areas
  • Oversee the full business development lifecycle, including pipeline management, forecasting, and conversion
  • Lead or support the development of major proposals, partnerships, and contracts
  • Build and maintain senior relationships with funders, governments, multilaterals, and implementing partners
  • Strengthen commercial discipline, including pricing, opportunity selection, and portfolio balance
  • Coach and support senior leaders in business development and account management
  • Allocate resources strategically across practices
  • Hold overall accountability for the quality, rigor, and impact of program delivery
  • Strengthen and enforce quality assurance systems across all projects and portfolios
  • Improve delivery reliability, including timelines, staffing models, and execution consistency
  • Monitor portfolio performance and address delivery risks proactively
  • Strengthen implementation capability across teams and geographies
  • Build and maintain knowledge management systems to support learning and reuse
  • Drive continuous improvement based on performance data and feedback
  • Lead, coach, and develop senior leaders across practices and portfolios
  • Build a strong leadership pipeline and succession plans for critical roles
  • Clarify roles, decision-making structures, and accountability across teams
  • Strengthen management capability, including performance management and delegation
  • Partner with the People function on recruitment, retention, and talent development
  • Partner with Director Voice on designing and co-creating impact strategies rooted in practice area relationships
  • Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning

Qualifications

  • 12–15+ years of experience in global development, consulting, research, or advisory environments with at least 5 years at the senior executive level
  • Proven track record of leading strategy, business development, and delivery at scale
  • Experience managing complex, multi-country portfolios or programs
  • Demonstrated success in building partnerships with funders, governments, or multilaterals
  • Experience leading and developing senior teams
  • Deep familiarity with applied behavioral science, psychology, economics, or a related discipline
  • Experience working across Africa and South Asia strongly preferred; lived or worked

Skills

Required:Strategic planningBusiness developmentPeople leadershipBehavioral science fluency

Benefits

  • Data Privacy Statement provided in job description
  • Note: Benefits are not explicitly enumerated in the text beyond privacy notice; no explicit benefits list present.
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Busara

Changing the world, one behavior at a time

Busara is an independent entity committed to applied research with partners seeking to use behavioral science to address specific problems. Since 2015, the organization has been working to bring research on poverty alleviation closer to the people it seeks to serve, translating knowledge into better practice through behavioral science tools and methods.

behavioral scienceapplied researchpoverty alleviationGlobal South
Company profileWebsite

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