Job Information
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Program Assistant, Maternal Newborn Child Nutrition & Health in Seattle, Washington
The Foundation
We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.
The Team
The Gender Equality Division’s mission it to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies. When women and girls have an equal chance to thrive and lead, everyone benefits. We know that women and girls are not a monolith. A woman’s experience and the barriers she faces are different depending on factors like where she lives, how old she is, and how much money her family has—alongside other factors including her race, caste, and education level. We seek to address these compounding barriers through deep partnership with our grantees. As a philanthropy, our role is to listen to and learn from these experts. We take risks in new areas, prove concepts, and bring these ideas to governments, partner organizations, and private sector companies to scale. The Gender Equality Division builds off our existing strengths as a foundation in areas like global health and data, partnering closely with all our global divisions.
The Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health (MNCNH) Team is responsible for an end-to-end approach focused on product discovery, development, introduction, and scale of novel and existing high impact products for women, adolescent girls, and children in low-resource settings. Our approach targets underlying biological vulnerability and seeks to intervene as early as possible in the life course. We fund development on a core set of products that range in type (including drugs, foods, microbes, risk algorithms, and devices), technical risk (from novel concepts to product substitutions), and development phase (from early discovery to late-stage efficacy testing and implementation research). We also support launch and introduction planning of a subset of our core products that are further in the development process to accelerate country adoption and uptake in the global architecture and drive impact at scale. These products target pregnancy risk, maternal undernutrition, prematurity, neonatal encephalopathy, child wasting, child neurodevelopment and maternal morbidity. Our team is multidisciplinary and includes physician scientists with backgrounds in obstetrics and pediatrics, perinatal epidemiologists, and professionals in neurodevelopment, nutrition research, engineering, global health, strategy development and industry-experienced market and commercialization experts. We emphasize in-country partnership to integrate the local context into research and development.
Your Role
As a Program Assistant, you will provide a wide and varied range of administrative and organizational support to the MNCNH Team. We are seeking a candidate that is comfortable with ambiguity, is flexible, and is energized by tackling new areas of work. Excellent judgement, attention to detail, proactive thinking and action, ownership of assigned responsibilities, resourceful problem solving, and acting with integrity are all critical skills for success in this role.
What You’ll Do
Provide administrative support to multiple senior-level team members.
Manage complex calendars including meetings with participants in multiple time zones, both internal and external to the foundation.
Act as a liaison with internal and external partners, grantees, government officials, and consultants.
Manage logistics, scheduling, and planning of events including coordinating arrangements for participants and disseminating materials for high-level events as needed.
Play a key role in team culture and help the Senior Program Assistant to design team effectiveness moments for team building and celebration.
Work with flexibility, efficiency, enthusiasm, and diplomacy both individually and as part of a team effort. Address issues in an open, constructive, and professional manner.
Work independently and as part of an integrated, diverse team and be comfortable in multiple, highly varied settings, and tight deadlines with different work and learning styles.
Perform tasks with care; be thorough. Make few if any errors and check work to ensure accuracy and completeness.
Your Experience
A minimum of 3 years’ work experience in an administrative role for a complex and fast-paced organization
Able to find solutions that are fitting for diverse groups with conflicting interests and needs by providing high-quality interactions with clear and consistent communication.
Demonstrated ability to use quantitative and qualitative data to present options for decision-making, highlight tradeoffs, and propose recommendations.
Excellent oral and written communication skills; must be able to communicate effectively with internal and external contacts and can adjust to a wide variety of working styles.
Demonstrated ability to use quantitative and qualitative data to present options for decision-making, highlight tradeoffs, and propose recommendations.
Excellent oral and written communication skills; must be able to communicate effectively with internal and external contacts and can adjust to a wide variety of working styles.
Demonstrated ability to work with efficiency, diplomacy, and flexibility, particularly as part of a team.
Experience setting priorities and meeting deadlines while balancing the needs of providing support for multiple individuals.
Experience working on teams with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds.
Proficient with MS Office Suite including Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, and Excel.
*Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.
The hourly rate range for this role is $29.98 to $41.98 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission. New hires salaries are typically between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.
Hiring Requirements
As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.
Candidate Accommodations
If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.
Inclusion Statement
We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.
All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/) works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Mark Suzman, under the direction of co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and the board of trustees.