Program Manager, Investments - Stanford Impact Labs

The world’s biggest social problems are complex, multi-faceted, and pervasive. No academic center, company, or organization can solve systemic issues – such as economic inequality, inequitable access to health care and education, and racial discrimination – alone. We need leaders with different skills and experiences to come together to generate fresh insights, evidence, and action to make progress. Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) was created to help make such progress possible.

 A major initiative at Stanford University, SIL invests in mission-driven teams of researchers and practitioners from government, business, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropy. These teams (we call them impact labs) work together on social problems of their choice, where practical progress is possible. With our support, these impact labs rapidly develop, test, and scale new solutions to social problems that affect millions of people worldwide. Learn more about our work at https://impact.stanford.edu/.

Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is an equal opportunity organization strongly committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. To that end, we particularly encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply for open positions. Please submit your resume and a cover letter through the Stanford Career Portal. 

WHAT YOU’LL DO

The Program Manager, Investments will own the operations and management of Stanford Impact Labs' grantmaking process, and drive strategic initiatives across the university to increase the impact of SIL’s grantees. This role will support the Director of Investments & Accountability at a unique time of dramatic growth in the organization and our investments. Over the past year, SIL’s portfolio of investments in impact labs has doubled in size, with plans for continued growth over the next few years. The Program Manager will design and execute operational improvements to help the SIL investments team work more efficiently and effectively. 

Core duties include: 

• Investment Operations Management: You will manage and improve on the operations of SIL’s investment process and portfolio management–where we deploy roughly ~$10 million annually in grantmaking across three funding opportunities. As part of SIL’s investment approach, you will coordinate the application process from end to end, from the initial request for proposals to signing of investment award agreements. You will demonstrate independence, initiative, and judgment in establishing workflows and coordinating effort across five functional teams within Stanford Impact Labs for nine to twelve month funding cycles. As an example, an important part of this role will be efficiently and effectively identifying, recruiting, and engaging over 70 subject matter experts each year to help SIL make decisions about how to direct its funding.. 
• Lab Support Services: You will independently manage and continuously refine a suite of lab support services to help amplify the impact of the teams we invest in. This suite of support currently includes SIL staff, external consultants, and add-on financial support. You will monitor our portfolio of investments to understand the roadblocks and risks to impact that our investees face and refresh our suite of lab support services over time. 
• Strategic Initiatives
• Cohort Experience: This role co-leads the development and delivery of workshops and curricula for active investments, in collaboration with the Director of Innovation and Partnerships.  
• As part of SIL’s work to lower the barriers to partnership-based research, you will directly support the Faculty Director in engaging senior university stakeholders to make it easier to conduct partnership-based research at Stanford. You will also support SIL’s portfolio with the tools and guidance to navigate existing university processes.
• Knowledge Management: You will lead management of systems for application and portfolio management, as well as our relationship management software (Salesforce).
• You will be responsible for community management of a new affiliate network, serving 100+ university scholars with programming and resources relevant to partnership-based, impact-focused work.  

WHO YOU ARE

You have:

• You have an undergraduate degree and at least 2 years of relevant work experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. 
• You are meticulous, detailed-oriented, and organized. You have project management experience and a demonstrated ability to independently manage multiple priorities and deadlines in dynamic environments.
• You are eager to learn and improve. You have demonstrated experience proactively finding opportunities to improve the efficiency of processes in pursuit of an overarching goal. 
• You solve problems. You have demonstrated creativity, critical analysis, initiative, judgment, and decision-making skills. You are able to overcome obstacles and accomplish goals. You are focused on results, and willing to try new approaches to achieve those results. 
• You are self-motivated and take initiative. You have demonstrated your willingness to roll up your sleeves and complete the small tasks, as well as the large ones.
• You are committed to inclusion. You work to make people from different experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives feel welcome, valued, and cared for. You value equity and demonstrate a willingness and excitement and ensure that diverse perspectives inform our investment process.
• You are a clear communicator. You have demonstrated superb communication skills, including synthesizing, interpreting, and presenting complex information to a variety of audiences, both in writing and verbally.
• You build effective relationships. You have demonstrated the ability to influence colleagues at all levels and collaborate effectively across functions. You share information and resources generously, and work for mutual success with internal and external partners.

No candidate will meet every requirement. We encourage applications from people who are a good fit - through work experience, volunteering, and other personal experiences - and who will grow and thrive in this position.

While we’re open to a variety of different candidates, this job could be an excellent fit for a number of different profiles, including people who (a) want a foothold in philanthropy in a small, but growing entrepreneurial organization; (b) are passionate about operations in mission-driven organizations; or (c) other candidates who are interested in social change, evidence-informed policy, research, public policy or higher education. 

Learn more: To ensure equitable access to information about this job, we’re unable to hold individual informational interviews. Instead, we encourage all interested candidates to join us for an open webinar on Friday, April 28th at 12:30p PT, where we’ll provide more information and take questions. Please register here. After April 28th, you may view the recording at the same link.

The expected pay range for this position is $66,100 to $107,000 per annum. Stanford University provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the university reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographic location and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position. Applicants must be authorized to work in the US to be considered for this position