Global Lead, Women's Protection and Empowerment Systems Transformation

The Global Lead, Women's Protection and Empowerment Systems Transformation is hired for this moment. They are IRC's organizational leader on GBV prevention and response and women's and girls' empowerment, a core member of the VPRU senior management team, and the person responsible for transforming how IRC delivers, finances, and positions its WPE work at a critical juncture for the sector.

Major Responsibilities

Strategy, program design and business development

• Lead the transformation of IRC's WPE practice, acting as the organizational reference point on GBV prevention and response, women's empowerment, and WPE systems strengthening, internally and externally.
• Lead strategic direction for WPE in line with S100 and the Safety Strategy; identify global areas of programmatic risk and elevate issues to Regional Leads and VPRU leadership.
• Lead global business development for WPE, bringing a clear distinction between financing for portfolio growth and financing for the quality, continuity, and sustainability of services.
• Steer the adaptation of the WPE operating model to current conditions without compromising service integrity.
• Collaborate with Global Practice Leads and Regional Leads to promote programmatic synergies within WPE and across IRC sectors.
• Line manage global practice area and strategic project staff; manage in partnership other roles as applicable.

Global practice implementation support

• Accountable for evidence-based technical oversight of WPE standards, methodologies, and tools, including cross-cutting issues such as diversity, inclusion, and climate adaptation.
• Approach quality as a diagnostic function, not a compliance one: distinguish between failures of implementation logic, funding or capacity constraints, context shifts that have rendered approaches maladapted, and policies that have not kept pace with the communities they serve.
• Support Regional Leads, Technical Advisors, and Technical Coordinators with thorny technical problems, capacity strengthening, mentorship, and career planning.

Research, data, knowledge management and learning

• Bring intellectual credibility to debates about evidence standards: make a rigorous case for implementation learning, longitudinal qualitative evidence, cross-system data linkage, practice-based inquiry, and community-level outcome tracking as legitimate, ethical, and contextually generative forms of knowledge alongside experimental evidence.
• Guide research and evidence use with a genuine intelligence orientation: read across datasets , SRH, mental health, social protection, GBV , to build a coherent narrative on violence and help-seeking behavior.
• Establish and maintain relevant Communities of Practice; provide technical inputs to WPE-specific MEAL tools; support data interpretation in learning routines.

External influence, representation and thought leadership

• Exercise entrepreneurial judgment in external representation: identify where consequential conversations about women's safety, protection systems, and financing are happening before the WPE sector has found them, and position IRC there with an intellectual contribution, not primarily a funding ask.
• Act as key strategic advisor to Policy and Advocacy, Research and Innovation, and External Relations on WPE-related advocacy campaigns and policy shifts.
• Develop and maintain strategic relationships and partnerships with a wide range of actors , donors, UN agencies, INGOs, academia, social justice organizations, and financing institutions.

Team leadership and culture

• Lead the WPE global team through transition with integrity and care: manage people whose roles may evolve, hold team morale through institutional pressure, and model the balance between honest acknowledgment of difficulty and genuine forward orientation.
• Hold serious work with humanity: sustain analytical rigor without clinical detachment, and support staff wellbeing without minimizing the weight of work that daily engages violence, trauma, and suffering.
• Invest in the relationship between global technical leadership and field practitioners: case workers, community mobilizers, GBV officers, clinical staff, and community-based protection networks.

Key Working Relationships

On partnerships and collective action Meaningful localization is a collective responsibility and organizational commitment, not a project deliverable. The Global Lead models this in how they build relationships with women-led and local organizations.

Key internal relationships

• VPRU Deputy Director; VPR Regional Leads across 5 regions and regional WPE Technical Advisors
• Global Practice Leads for Child Protection, Protection Rule of Law, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Water and Sanitation, Economic Inclusion
• Safe, Inclusive and Transformative Programming Team; VPRU Policy and Advocacy Lead; VPRU Program Development and Partnerships Lead
• Global System Strengthening Team; Global HQ and AMU focal points

Key external relationships The Global Lead actively expands and diversifies VPRU's external network beyond the conventional GBV coordination architecture.

Desired Experience and Skills

Core WPE and GBV expertise (required)

• Established or growing recognition as an expert at regional or global level, with 12+ years of progressive experience designing, leading, and implementing programs, including 7+ years in GBV/WPE.
• Strong track record of driving uptake of evidence-based practice.
• Demonstrated experience in sectoral strategy design and planning; experience with policy and advocacy efforts and campaigns for change.

Systems, financing, and cross-sectoral orientation (strongly preferred; can be further strengthened in role)

• Demonstrated interest in social work systems, case management practice, or integrated protection service delivery models, with genuine curiosity about how GBV connects to broader systems strengthening.
• Intellectual engagement with the financing of protection and prevention programming, including how services for survivors and prevention mechanisms are resourced, and how more durable financing models for WPE outcomes can be built.