Job Description
Senior External Affairs Officer, Corporate & Leadership Messaging
World Bank Group
Washington, DC 20433
Job #:
req11168
3/21/2021 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC
Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org
External and Corporate Relations Vice-Presidency (ECR)
The mission of External and Corporate Relations (ECR) is to help deliver financial and political support for the World Bank Group, strengthen the Bank Group’s role as a global thought leader in development by enhancing and safeguarding its reputation, and supporting operational teams to achieve country outcomes. ECR manages corporate communications and global engagement with key stakeholders, including media, civil society, foundations, private sector, donor countries, and international organizations, as well as employee engagement. ECR also manages strategic communications for the World Bank’s Regions and Global Practices and leads the management of reputation risk.
Roles & Responsibilities
The Senior External Affairs Officer has a prominent communications and messaging role within ECR Corporate Communication’s media and messaging team (ECRME). The role requires someone with excellent communications judgment, a strong understanding of the global media landscape, solid communications experience and a proven track record to strategically develop and build out messaging around major World Bank Group initiatives and goals. The Senior External Affairs Officer reports to the ECRME Manager.
The role of the Senior External Affairs Officer is to drive and execute a savvy, goal-oriented messaging strategy that looks for opportunities to help senior leadership and communications professional speak with one, strategic voice to increase support for the WBG’s mission among priority audiences. We are looking for an individual who understands and anticipates the changing media and stakeholder landscape and can create and oversee proactive and impactful messaging strategies that can drive change, combining powerful digital, traditional media and partnership approaches. Candidates will be familiar with messaging trends and the nexus between messaging and research. S/he will work with teams throughout the World Bank to craft compelling messages for senior management around a steady supply of top-notch development initiatives.
The position includes the following:
Design and maintain corporate messaging products to maintain and build political and financial support for corporate priorities and initiatives among key stakeholders, working closely with communication colleagues from across the WBG. The Senior Communications Officer will be responsible for the timing, release and dissemination of corporate messages at least quarterly and often monthly.
Collaborate with internal and external teams across multiple disciplines to successfully manage complex, fast-moving and unexpected messaging challenges, including the development of messages around hot issues and new priorities, particularly securing additional resources for IDA.
Constantly monitor statements, speeches, blogs and other messaging by senior management to ensure continuity and uniformity in messaging as much as possible, updating corporate messaging when necessary.
Synthesize and unify complex ideas and make them accessible to the Bank’s primary stakeholders.
Produce, on select occasions, thought leadership pieces such as, speeches, op-eds, or blogs, in support of senior leadership across print, digital, and broadcast media. Assist in preparing talking points and media briefing notes for interviews and other public speaking engagements that drive our strategic goals and are on-message about the Bank, its policies and operations.
Supervise work to identify and disseminate monthly/quarterly corporate messaging and media priorities. Develop new messaging products to support goal of uniform messaging, when necessary.
Stay well informed on key issues impacting the Bank in the public sphere to appropriately finetune messaging. Work with research team to align messaging with in-country research.
Stay ahead of messaging trends to identify messages that can create opportunities relevant to the WBG.
Conduct messaging development and training sessions for Bank management and communication teams.
Selection Criteria
A Master’s degree in Political Science, Economics, International Relations/Public Affairs, Journalism or other relevant field, with a minimum of eight years of relevant work experience with a focus on multilateral organizations, development, and/or international financial institutions;
Proven track record of senior-level communications work, including strategic messaging development and management, combining traditional and digital strategies, issue advocacy, and campaign building;
Proven ability to assess and identify reputational risk issues, and in designing, implementing and, where appropriate, leading crisis messaging strategies and response;
Proven planning and organizational skills, ability to think strategically and translate and integrate audience insight and data into goal-oriented, message-driven communications;
Proven ability to work both independently and in diverse teams in a multicultural setting with strong attention to detail and minimal supervision;
Demonstrated capacity to work confidently with senior-level managers/C-suite executives;
Strong interest in development issues, strategic communication, and multilateral cooperation/negotiation, with the ability to disseminate information effectively and strategically, and strong capacity to think and act strategically;
Ability to effectively interact with internal and external clients at all levels, and to exercise judgment, tact and discretion in dealing with sensitive and/or confidential matters;
Demonstrates ability and the necessary organization skills to take initiative, personal ownership, and accountability to meet deadlines, work under pressure, and achieve agreed-upon results;
Excellent oral, written communication and presentation skills, including proficiency to write and edit complex subject material for purposeful structure, clarity of ideas, and logical, persuasive presentation;
Familiarity with communications approaches, tools and methodologies for planning, executing, and monitoring communications strategies. – e.g. message development and targeting.
Ability to collaborate with other team members and contribute productively to the team's work and output, demonstrating respect for different points of view.
Ability to analyze facts and data to support sound, logical decisions.
For information about WBG Core Competencies, please visit: https://bit.ly/2kbIA7O
Poverty has no borders, neither does excellence. We succeed because of our differences and we continuously search for qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds from around the globe.