Project Director - Western Balkans
Zinc Network, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Job Description
Zinc Network is a B-Corp certified international development company headquartered in London and with offices in Washington, D.C., Tbilisi, Riga, Warsaw, and Nairobi. We’re on a mission to achieve meaningful, measurable change through the application of behavioural science and strategic communications, technology, and human-centred design (HCD).
We have 100+ team members from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, including democratic governance specialists, behavioural scientists, researchers, content producers, digital experts, and service designers. We work with a broad range of governmental, NGO, and private sector clients, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); the U.S. Department of State (DOS); the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD); the UK Home Office (HO); the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); UN agencies and missions; Microsoft; and the Internet Watch Foundation.
We conceptualise and create award-winning programs, interventions, and campaigns that change the way that people think, feel, and act across a wide range of pervasive social issues, including disinformation and hate speech, violent extremism, poor governance, threats to children and young people’s online safety, gender-based violence, and more.
Zinc seeks a Project Director (PD) for an anticipated media literacy project in the Western Balkans. The PD will provide strategic and project management oversight of the project and be accountable for all aspects of delivery. This will be a hybrid position based in the Western Balkans.
Key responsibilities:
- Lead a cutting-edge project dedicated to advancing creative, results-driven approaches to advancing media literacy and development across the Western Balkans.
- Drive overall program strategy and technical direction, and supervise partners and personnel, including by providing project management, operations, and financial leadership to reach program goals.
- Ensure and maintain high standards of quality assurance across all client deliverables, including quarterly and annual reports.
- Apply technical expertise in countering disinformation, advancing information integrity, and/or strengthening independent media to the Project’s work planning, implementation, activity adjustments, and monitoring and evaluation.
- Identify issues and risks associated with project implementation in a timely manner and guide appropriate adjustments.
- Facilitate close collaboration and teamwork, including mentorship and development of local partners and staff.
- Lead regular, conflict and gender sensitive, work planning and oversee reporting and project learning activities.
- Represent the project compellingly to the client and all other internal and external stakeholders.
- Oversee the collection, analysis and dissemination of successes and lessons learned to inform programme adaptation, build an evidence base of what works, and inform scale-up strategies.
Requirements
Sharing our enthusiasm for measurable impact and data-driven insight, you are a great leader and communicator who is passionate about issues related to advancing democracy and good governance. Naturally, you have a high degree of rigour, leadership and project management experience, attention to detail, ability to translate complex concepts into succinct, compelling messages, and the soft skills to successfully manage multi-disciplinary teams in complex environments. You also have:
1. A robust contextual understanding of the Western Balkans, possess extensive networks in the region (among policymakers, the donor community, civil society and media outlets)
2. Experience in delivering donor-funded programmes in the Western Balkans is required, preferably in leadership positions.
3. Experience of mainstreaming gender and conflict sensitivity across all aspects of project delivery.
4. Experience of donor-funded project management processes, tools and reporting standards in particular evidence-based reporting against indicators in project Results Frameworks (RFs), conducting strategic reviews of assumptions underpinning causal pathways in project Theories of Change (ToCs), and the development of annual work plans that are firmly aligned to project ToCs and RFs.
5. Experience of supporting the development and implementation of monitoring and evaluation strategies for tracking and measuring project performance.
6. Extensive experience and expertise in the sectors of media literacy and development, regional and geopolitical dynamics, and civil society strengthening.
7. Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as international relations, organisational development, communications, media, political science, or digital media and communications. Master’s degree preferred.
8. Minimum