Southeast Asia Regional Director
About IDinsight
IDinsight Southeast Asia is at an important juncture in its evolution. It has built a substantial and impactful body of work across sectors and countries in the region. With an experienced and well-qualified team, the organisation is poised for double-digit growth well into the future. IDinsight is a values-based organisation, made up of staff who are passionate about using data to foster a more just, prosperous, and sustainable world. IDinsight believes in staying at the cutting edge and continuously adding and innovating new evidence tools to amplify their partners’ impact.
Building on this strong foundation, IDinsight is poised to mobilise its unique approach and expertise towards social impact with greater depth and scale. To convert the range of exciting opportunities before them into actual impact, it stands by ready to welcome the development sector’s best leaders and invest them with autonomy and resources to ambitiously pursue social impact.
About the Role
The Southeast Asia Regional Director (SEARD) role will be supported by the CEO and IDinsight Southeast Asia’s Directors. It will assume critical responsibility for driving large pieces of IDinsight’s work and strategy in Southeast Asia. Further, the SEARD will be supported by high-quality research teams, an excellent operations team that ensures a well-functioning organisation, and a communications team to help amplify the Director’s voice in policy circles. A portion of the SEARD’s time, along with a small budget, will be safeguarded for research, thought leadership, professional development, and leadership coaching. The SEARD will work with the Chief of Staff to help them execute their responsibilities. This includes the annual objectives, key results and coordination across the organisation, and bi-annual performance reviews (including feedback from peers and direct reports), to help them grow and learn as professionals.
Purpose of the Role
The SEARD will be provided significant autonomy to leverage IDinsight as a platform to drive social impact while also being held accountable to clear goals they will set for themselves in consultation with the CEO and other leaders at IDinsight Southeast Asia.
Duties and Responsibilities
The SEARD’s role will be unique and tailored to their strengths and interests. However, at a high level, the role will include the following:
Lead IDinsight Southeast Asia towards social impact: The SEARD’s primary responsibility is to drive and increase IDinsight Southeast Asia’s social impact using their experience, expertise, and networks. Towards this goal, the SEARD will help conceptualise, secure, fundraise, and execute impactful initiatives that use data and evidence to drive change. In addition, the SEARD is expected to repeatedly set the north star of social impact for the region, including all project teams, and drive all aspects of the organisation towards this goal.
Envision and execute IDinsight’s Southeast Asia strategy: The SEARD will be responsible for working closely with Southeast Asia and global leadership teams to envision, craft, refine and execute IDinsight’s strategy in Southeast Asia.
Lead and represent IDinsight Southeast Asia externally: The SEARD will be IDinsight Southeast Asia’s face both within Southeast Asia and globally. They will be expected to apply their considerable experience, expertise, and skills to shape evidence-informed action within one or multiple sectors, regions, or specialisations. This includes writing in leading newspapers and journals, speaking at important conferences, harnessing relationships and networks within the impact community to develop trusted advisory positions with senior leaders, and participating in consultative councils within governments, foundations, and/or non-profits.
Lead, mentor and guide project teams: The SEARD will typically also directly lead a small number of projects in addition to the Southeast Asia leadership role. Project leadership involves regularly liaising with senior clients, ensuring the highest research quality and ethics standards, overseeing and mentoring teams (usually 1-2 Managers, with 3-6 members in total), providing a safe and enabling atmosphere for colleagues, and keeping within project budgets.
Support organisational development: The SEARD will also contribute to global and regional operations such as recruitment, onboarding and performance reviews. They will be expected to support IDinsight to remain an impact-first, values-based, and nimble organisation even as we grow.
Exemplify IDinsight’s mission and values: Ensuring a solid alignment between incoming SEARD and IDinsight’s values will be an essential priority. The SEARD is the face of IDinsight both externally and internally and will be expected to always and unambiguously exemplify our mission and values.
Skills and Experience
- Deep passion for development and social impact, and strong alignment with IDinsight’s vision and mission;
- Record of building strong stakeholder and client relationships, especially with governments in Southeast Asia (particularly the Philippines and Indonesia);
- Record of impactful thought leadership and advocacy around important social and/or technical issues;
- Fluency in the role of data and evidence tools – such as impact evaluations, representative surveys, monitoring systems, and/or machine learning – to create insights and impact;
- Ability to be an inspiring leader in a dynamic, multicultural, and values-based environment;
- Attitude to thrive in an entrepreneurial setting and be able to adapt to dynamic growth and change;
- Eagerness to be a lifelong learner with keen intellectual curiosity and sense of humour;
- Willingness to travel as needed and to work with remote colleagues (around 30%);
- Experience of 10+ years using data and evidence to improve social impact, ideally in Southeast Asia;
- An advanced degree (Master’s or Doctoral), preferably in public policy, economics, public administration, business, or public health.