Tony Blair Institute for Global Change Hiring for Associate at London, OR Full Time

Focus of the Role
At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), we work at the highest levels of government to help leaders go further and faster to make their citizens’ lives better. Moving the dial on the great global challenges of our time requires engaged, incentivised, focused and motivated leaders. When political leadership is relentlessly deployed, at the highest levels, incredible things can be achieved.

Using our distinctive expertise and global outlook and guided by the unique insights and perspective of our Executive Chairman Sir Tony Blair, our dedicated experts and embedded teams advise governments all over the world in strategy, policy and delivery, underpinned by technology.

Our new Global Client Solutions team is at the heart of how we define “what we do” and then distribute the best of the Institute and our networks to global leaders through our country advisory teams. As a centre of excellence, Global Client Solutions is comprised of our centrally situated global and regional experts – functional and sectoral. Our experts provide valuable counsel, technical support, thought partnership, strategy, and surge capacity and lead the development and evolution of our solutions, methods, and offers in the service of our partner governments. Through our country teams and embedded advisors working hand-in-hand with government, we assemble, tailor and distribute our offer to address specific and ever-evolving needs in the various contexts we operate across the world.

Our functional offers include Strategy: supporting political leaders to identify the barriers to progress, Policy advisory: finding the right solutions, Delivery: making change happen, and then harnessing the transformative power of Technology to support leaders to engage with forward-looking opportunities. Sectorally, we work on the topics at the heart of senior political agendas from economic prosperity, climate change and energy, health and education, to peace and security. We also lead our internal communities of practice bringing our expertise together regardless of “boxes and lines”

Job Introduction
To enable Global Client Solutions to successfully achieve its vision, we are looking for a well-rounded Associate who can support senior leadership to define our strategy and offers for governments across sectors and functions; develop key assets, collateral and thought leadership; and help to launch new initiatives alongside our global country teams and partner governments.

This role requires a creative problem solver, strategic thinker, and someone who is passionate about politics and energised by the opportunity to work across multiple topics. The ideal candidate has experience working with public sector, developing strategies and methodologies, and the ability to interact with clients (both within and outside of TBI) with professionalism, confidentiality and integrity.

Example of the types of projects that the Associate may work on include: supporting the Director for Climate & Energy to outline their global offer and our internal positioning on key debates; developing central playbooks and a methodology for our work in Cloud Infrastructure; conduct analysis to recommend what our offers in new topics should be; or providing hands-on support to get a new Health initiative up and running in one of our 30+ countries.

This role will report to the Strategic Advisor, Global Client Solutions, and has a close working relationship with the Directors for all Sectors and Functions within Global Client Solutions, Country Teams (including Country Heads & Heads of Tech), and other interfacing teams such as the Global Innovation Unit and Strategic Partnerships & Initiatives.

Key Responsibilities
he key responsibilities of this role will include.

Developing and evolving the Global Client Solutions Strategies & Offers
Working directly with the Global Client Solutions Strategic Advisor, Sector/Function Directors, and Country Teams to e.g.:

• Outline our global/regional priorities and offers to governments for our Sectors & Functions
• Conduct analysis to inform the strategic direction of our offers, and help to outline and launch new offers
• Extract best practice methods and approaches, and build centralised collateral to share with our global organisation
• Create government-facing pitch decks & explainers on our work
• Come up with innovative ideas for and build new tools, solutions and assets to enable our work with governments, such as benchmarking solutions, playbooks and assessments

Providing hands-on country support and application of our offers

• Enabling in-country teams to access our centralised expertise and assets, including providing advice and training on how to leverage them for their country needs
• Support in-country teams to develop their offers to government, by e.g. supporting Country and Regional Heads on strategy and initiative design, or creating government facing materials such as presidential briefings or proposals
• Potential travel to countries to provide surge support on the ground – e.g. country workshops
• Capturing lessons learnt and best practices from country engagements to improve the quality of our work, and support the evolution of tools, templates, and guides

Enabling a culture of expertise and sharing across the Institute

• Working with teams across the Institute and with our Communities of Practice to gather user needs for collateral and assets, as well as local, sectoral and functional knowledge to codify and incorporate in our offers
• Working with interfacing teams to ensure distribution and uptake of products, and gather feedback from users
• Be an active participant in our Communities of Practice to encourage expertise exchange and identifying opportunities for collaboration across geographies
• Provide inputs into internal Learning & Development materials to upskill & train colleagues on our offers and approaches

Developing external thought leadership

• Working with our Directors, as well as supporting teams such as Comms, to create e.g. op-eds, blogs, case studies
• Owning and developing content for key critical TBI conferences and events
• Conducting analysis to inform and align our internal positions and advice on key topics, including for briefings to our Executive Chairman

Person Specification
The successful candidate should demonstrate the majority of the following:

• Experience similar to working as a business analyst, advisor or management/strategy consultant; for Foundation/NGOs, public sector, or private sector organisations
• Strong problem-solving, analysis and structuring skills, with experience in extracting common methodologies and approaches, and identifying opportunities for new solutions and assets
• Experience in strategy design, built on strong analytical and research skills, and the ability to work with a diverse set of content experts to extract relevant insights
• Excellent communication skills, with a track record of building effective collateral and assets that meet user needs, across multiple communication channels
• Enjoys the opportunity of working across multiple topics, contributing to Strategy, Policy, Delivery & Technology, and across sectors such as economic prosperity, climate change and energy, health and education, to peace and security.
• A team player with high EQ and ability to navigate ambiguous and matrixed environments, and is comfortable at managing up and beyond hierarchy
• Experience with international development, public sector, and in some of our core Sectors is highly desired
• Direct experience working in LMICs is highly beneficial and strong cross-cultural communication skills required
• Relevant language skills for TBIs regions of work highly desired (French, Portuguese, Balkan languages, etc)
• As needed, be willing to travel to all locations of TBI’s current and future work to provide surge support and programmatic growth

About The Institute
The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) is a mission-driven not for profit organisation. We exist to equip political leaders and governments to build open, inclusive and prosperous societies. We work hard, every day, to make a difference. When governments work well they are able to create economic and social change in a way that promotes fairness, social justice and opportunity. We work relentlessly to support leader and governments with the challenges they face. Giving them practical solutions and actionable insights, that once implemented, can be transformative for their people

We do this within two connected divisions:

Government Advisory
Our Government Advisory teams work directly with political leaders and governments around the world to implement reforms that improve the lives of their citizens. It works with a variety of partners and its outputs cover a range of disciplines and projects across countries in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South Asia.

Policy Futures
Our Policy Futures work encompasses three broad areas:

• Renewing the Centre: developing a bold and innovative domestic policy programme to help renew the centre ground of British politics;
• Tech and Public Policy: exploring the policy challenges and opportunities presented by the technological revolution; and
• Extremism Policy Unit: creating solutions designed to tackle the threat of extremist ideologies in the UK and around the world.

As an organisation, the core beliefs we all embrace are:

• Open and Progressive: you’ll believe in the value of teamwork
• Bold and Pragmatic: you’ll approach everything you do with integrity and authenticity
• Optimistic Changemaker: you’ll be focused on results

TBI believes embracing diversity and inclusion make us a better place to work. It’s our goal to reflect everyone in society and we actively welcome applications from individuals and groups who are under-represented in the workplace. We celebrate difference be it ethnicity, religion, age, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. We will only ever assess you on your abilities and fit for a role. We’re happy to discuss any adjustments you need to ensure a level playing field during recruitment and, if you’re successful, discuss any adjustments you might need to thrive in your role.