Chief Operating Officer

Who are we?

Malala Fund is working for a world where all girls can learn and lead. Malala Fund advocates for resources and policy changes needed to give all girls a secondary education, invests in local education leaders and amplifies the voices of girls fighting for change. Learn more atmalala.org.

What does this team do?

The Executive Team provides enterprise-wide leadership and strategic direction for Malala Fund. Working with the CEO, the team aligns priorities, resources, and action across functions and geographies. As a globally distributed leadership team, the Executive Team brings diverse perspectives and expertise to strengthen organisational performance, navigate complexity and risk, and ensure Malala Fund has the people, systems, and capacity to deliver its mission sustainably.

What does this position do?

As our Chief Operating Officer, you’ll serve as the CEO’s principal operating partner, leading key functions and ensuring Malala Fund has the people, systems, resources, and capacity to deliver its strategy effectively and sustainably.As a member of the Executive Leadership Team, you’ll work across functions and geographies to align priorities, strengthen organisational planning, navigate complexity and risk, and turn strategy into coordinated action. You’ll bring strong judgement, analytical thinking, and collaborative leadership to help Malala Fund operate with clarity, discipline, and ambition.

Duties and Responsibilities

Strategic Planning, Enterprise Integration and Execution

• Serve as a candid, trusted thought partner to the CEO, bringing independent judgement, practical recommendations and an enterprise-wide view of strategic choices, trade-offs and organisational implications.
• Partner with the CEO and ELT to shape and adapt organisational strategy and translate agreed direction into integrated multi-year and annual priorities, operating plans, budgets, resource plans, milestones and decision points, with clear consideration of feasibility, sequencing, capacity, risk, performance and learning.
• Act as a principal enterprise integrator across the ELT, connecting functional and country priorities to organisational strategy, surfacing cross-functional dependencies and trade-offs, and ensuring that work arrives sufficiently integrated for timely decision-making and execution.
• Establish and lead effective enterprise planning and operating rhythms, including strategic and performance reviews, management information and decision-tracking systems, to support clear ownership, timely decisions and consistent follow-through.
• In collaboration with the CEO and ELT, identify and help resolve organisational bottlenecks, competing priorities and capacity constraints; strengthen decision rights and accountability so that issues are resolved at the appropriate level and enterprise processes enable, rather than displace, the authority and accountability of Country Chief Executives and functional leaders.

Finance

• Oversee the organisation’s annual budgeting and reforecasting processes, working closely with the Controller and CEO to ensure financial plans reflect strategic priorities, realistic revenue assumptions, organisational capacity and longer-term sustainability.
• Provide executive financial leadership to the ELT, working closely with the Controller to ensure that multi-year financial planning, scenario analysis and resource trade-offs inform organisational decisions and that leaders have clear, decision-useful financial information to manage their portfolios effectively
• Provide executive oversight of the Finance function, ensuring that appropriate financial systems, policies and controls are in place to support strong expenditure discipline, budget management and reallocation, restricted-fund management, cash and reserves planning, and sound financial stewardship.
• Oversee the organisation’s financial reporting, audit and statutory financial obligations across Malala Fund entities, holding the Finance function accountable for timely and accurate delivery and working with Country Chief Executives, external advisers and relevant Board committees as appropriate.
• Ensure the CEO, ELT and Board have timely and transparent visibility into Malala Fund’s financial performance, outlook and material risks, and that financial insights are integrated into enterprise planning, performance reviews and strategic decision-making.
• Provide executive oversight of Malala Fund’s reserves and investment approach, ensuring alignment with approved policies and working with the Controller, CEO and relevant Board committees on material decisions.
• Partner closely with the CEO and Chief Growth Officer on revenue scenarios, affordability and the implications of fundraising performance for organisational commitments, ensuring a clear connection between income outlook, strategic ambition and resource decisions.

Operations, Risk, Safeguarding and Organisational Resilience

• In partnership with the CEO, ELT, and Board of Directors, sets annual strategic priorities and goals, workplans and resource plans (funds and personnel) to support organizational priorities.
• Lead a coherent, fit-for-purpose operating model across Malala Fund’s entities and geographies, ensuring that organisational structures, systems and resources support effective strategy execution, sustainability and efficiency while preserving appropriate country and functional authority.
• Oversee organisational operations, contracts, procurement, IT and data systems, information management, business continuity, security coordination and core administrative infrastructure.
• Strengthen organisational resilience and reduce single points of failure through clear roles and accountabilities, documented processes, appropriate controls, continuity planning, effective knowledge management and appropriate deputies.
• Provide executive oversight of enterprise safeguarding systems, organisational readiness, resourcing, training and accountability, ensuring safeguarding is embedded appropriately across organisational systems while respecting protected escalation routes and the technical authority established under Malala Fund’s safeguarding policies.
• Oversee routine internal organisational communications and information rhythms, working with the CEO Office, Communications, and relevant leaders to support transparency, clarity, learning, and alignment. Coordinate major change communications with the CEO, Chief of Staff, and Communications; external communications and institutional positioning remain outside the COO’s line remit.
• Ensure Finance, Operations, Risk, and other systems support effective grantmaking, working with the Director of Grants and Country Chief Executives. The Director of Grants oversees grant operations and grantmaking where there is no resident country leadership. Country Chief Executives retain responsibility for grantmaking strategy and decisions in Nigeria and Pakistan.
• Strengthen policies, procedures, and management systems to improve effectiveness, consistency, and accountability while avoiding unnecessary hierarchy, centralisation, or bureaucracy.
• Lead enterprise risk and compliance, including the organisational risk register and coordination with legal counsel, Country Chief Executives, and external advisers to identify and manage regulatory, operational, and organisational risks across jurisdictions.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

• Provide executive leadership and line oversight of MEL as a strategic learning, evidence and impact function, ensuring it strengthens organisational decision-making and is not reduced to compliance, activity reporting or data collection.
• Strengthen fit-for-purpose approaches to measuring and understanding Malala Fund’s contribution to policy influence, advocacy, grantmaking and systems change, using quantitative, qualitative, contribution-focused and adaptive methods as appropriate.
• Ensure learning questions are grounded in strategy and that evidence is reviewed consistently and used to inform strategic, country, advocacy, grantmaking and resource decisions.
• Work in partnership with country, grants and advocacy leaders, who retain substantive roles in shaping learning questions, interpreting findings and determining implications for their strategies.
• Support the establishment of clear organisation-wide measures of progress and learning that distinguish organisational performance from mission impact, focus attention on the measures most useful for decision-making, and support credible reporting to the CEO, ELT and Board.

Governance Support

• Subject to Board approval, may serve as Board Secretary on an interim basis while the Board determines the longer-term arrangement for the Secretary role.
• Working with the CEO, Board Chair and CEO Office, support appropriate Board governance processes, including meeting notices, minutes, records and timely provision of information needed by the Board to carry out its responsibilities.

What you bring to us and the role!

Production and technical skills

• 15+ years of progressive senior leadership experience spanning operations, finance and enterprise management, including experience translating organisational strategy into multi-year and annual operating plans.
• Previous experience leading operations and/or finance in a global and similarly sized or larger organization, and experience in leading operations in the Global South.
• Demonstrated enterprise operating leadership across several enabling functions, with substantial responsibility for finance and operations and experience translating strategy into multi-year and annual execution plans.
• Strong financial strategy and stewardship, including budgeting, forecasting, scenario planning, resource trade-offs, controls, audit oversight and Board-level financial communication.
• Meaningful senior-level experience working in or alongside advocacy, policy influence, grantmaking or systems-change organisations or portfolios, with the ability to understand how evidence and learning should inform mission strategy without imposing direct-service measurement models.
• Exceptional team and people management skills; deep commitment to and belief in developing others, with an ability to influence, inspire trust, and motivate others to achieve objectives, both internally and externally.
• Strong analytic and strategic-thinking skills with a demonstrated ability to create, implement, and monitor complex initiatives, and translate those plans into goals and concrete strategies.
• A record of leading organisational transition, growth, restructuring or periods of financial pressure while maintaining trust, delivery and clear communication.
• Experience overseeing enterprise risk, compliance and organisational resilience systems, with sufficient safeguarding judgement to provide effective executive oversight of organisational safeguarding responsibilities
• Impeccable cross-cultural sensitivity, diplomacy, communicative skills, and discretion.
• A creative, open, and innovative mind energetically searching for new solutions.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build trust and relationships with diverse audiences.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex organisational, financial and strategic issues clearly to staff, executive leaders and Boards.
• Passion for our mission and a commitment to using your skills to make a positive impact on behalf of girls.
• Operates with managerial courage, a high EQ, and low ego.
• Communicates the why behind decisions and processes, ensuring that diverse constituencies are engaged effectively and in an ongoing manner. English fluency.
• Ability and willingness to travel regularly to Malala Fund offices and countries of operation, including the U.S., U.K., Nigeria and Pakistan.

Desirable

• Experience working with global funds or foundations.
• Experience working with or for high-profile principals, founders or public figures in a mission-driven organisation.
• Experience with organisational learning approaches designed for advocacy, policy change and other complex systems-change environments.
• Specific familiarity with the global education and/or girls’ rights sectors and relevant relationships across private sector, CSO, UN, and government stakeholders.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• The COO directly oversees senior leaders and teams across Finance, Operations, and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, as well as other roles within the approved organisational structure. The COO builds strong teams and develops leaders with appropriate autonomy and accountability.
• Builds high-performing leadership teams through recruitment, performance management, succession, and leadership development
• Sets clear expectations and accountabilities, ensuring leaders have the authority, resources, and support to deliver
• Provides timely, constructive feedback and performance evaluations
• Leads fair, consistent, and well-documented disciplinary and termination processes
• Models inclusive, respectful, and accountable leadership across countries and teams

Travel Required

Ability to travel every quarter to Malala Fund offices is required.

Malala Fund is an equal opportunity employer and inclusive organization who welcomes employees from under-represented and intersectional communities including BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and persons with disabilities. We seek people with diverse backgrounds, cultures, ages, experiences and identities to provide a wide range of perspectives, ideas, views and insights into the strategy, policies, culture and ambitions of Malala Fund.

Malala Fund is committed to safeguarding and ensuring the safety and dignity of all of those involved in our work.

Malala Fund has a zero-tolerance approach to abuse, exploitation, harassment, or discrimination of any kind by any of our staff, representatives or partners. We commit to ensuring that those who work with Malala Fund or on our behalf are able to work in an environment that is safe, respectful, and free from harm.

To uphold this commitment, Malala Fund reserves the right to conduct background checks on prospective and current employees.