Behavioral Insights Coordinator at the International Rescue Committee (IRC)

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Behavioral Insights Coordinator

Requisition ID: req19028
Location: Abuja
Sector: Research & Development
Employment Category: Fixed Term
Employment Type: Full-Time
Open to Expatriates: Yes

Job Description

The IRC’s strategy centers on its dedication to continue to increase the scale and improve the effectiveness of its programs worldwide with evidence of what works best to impact people’s lives in conflict and fragile settings.
Breakthrough solutions are needed to match the urgency and gravity of the problems faced by people affected by crises. That’s why the IRC created the Airbel Impact Lab, the IRC’s research and innovation team that designs, tests and scales life-changing solutions for people facing conflict and disaster.
The Airbel Impact Lab focuses on addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems, in some of the toughest environments, such as:
- Treating child malnutrition,
- Delivering last mile education, and
- Women-centered health programs to save lives and provide choice
- Supporting climate resilient agricultural livelihoods and
- Mental health and psychosocial services. Across each of these areas, we create solutions as big as the problems. Our vision is not only to increase IRC’s impact, but to change the way humanitarian aid is delivered around the world.

Job Overview

The Behavioral Insights Coordinator will help to project manage behaviorally informed products and services in IRC’s growing behavioral science portfolio addressing these pressing issues. They will have the opportunity to work within Airbel’s behavioral insights team to develop new behaviorally-informed products and services to improve outcomes for people affected by crisis, manage behavioral science research projects, and promote the application of behavioral insights across the IRC.
For example, a significant part of their responsibilities will be developing new behaviorally-informed products and services to improve learning outcomes for refugee children in East Africa and promoting the application of behavioral insights across the PlayMatters education project.
However, they will also have the opportunity to work with the other areas, such as teams addressing child malnutrition or climate resilient livelihoods, as well as with other innovative practice teams within Airbel Impact Lab, including Strategy, Research, Human Centred Design, among others. In addition to project management, this role will draw from disciplines as diverse as human-centered design, participatory research and testing, and agile / open source software development.
This role requires a mix of operational, project management, design and research skills, and strong knowledge of behavioral science evidence and humanitarian issues.

Major Responsibilities
Manage the Design, Development and Launch of new Behaviorally-informed Solutions:

Provide project management support across core projects, including project managing qualitative and quantitative research and prototyping; coordination between teams in HQ, country programs, technical experts and behavioral scientists; and providing day to day support operationalization behaviorally informed research activities.
Provide strategic guidance and technical support on high-profile, multi-country projects, such as the PlayMatters project and others.
Work collaboratively with the Behavioral Insights Lead, Behavioral Insights Advisor, the Airbel Impact Lab, IRC Technical Units, the PlayMatters Regional East Africa team, and distributed global IRC teams to gather relevant inputs, synthesize, and help develop new behaviorally-informed products and services to improve outcomes for people in crisis.
Support questionnaire development and qualitative analysis; design behavioral intervention prototypes, and into small-scale RCTs to inform programming and decision-making.
Lead the knowledge management of behavioral insights projects and resources. Openly share lessons and learnings from the field with the broader humanitarian, behavioral science, and social innovation communities; present and publish behavioral science research findings in academic journals and practitioner-focused outlets.
Work collaboratively with the PlayMatters team, Airbel Impact Lab, technical and country program teams to gather relevant inputs, synthesize, and develop new behaviorally-informed products and services to improve outcomes for people in crisis
Identify the potential to apply behavioral science insights across IRC projects and enable teams to leverage behavioral insights in program design
Support the IRC behavioral insights team and Airbel Impact Lab to identify behaviorally-informed research questions and areas of interest within the IRC’s organizational research and innovation priorities
Promote, teach, and explain behavioral science concepts and techniques to project teams such as the PlayMatters project team, other IRC programs and technical unit staff.
Serve as a behavioral insights resource to IRC staff seeking information, including revenue and advocacy departments; respond to field queries regarding behavioral science research and innovations and present findings in actionable terms
Contribute to the development of behavioral science evidence reviews; co-develop behavioral science evidence products and organizational theories of change.

Behavioral Science Partnership Management and Development:

Support engagement and building of IRC’s connections to behavioral science actors at a global, regional and national level – including academics, donors, other implementing organizations, behavioral science associations and inter-agency groups and foundations – working with the team to explore and grow avenues for partnership, collaboration and coordination
Support and maintain effective coordination and long-term relationships with external behavioral science stakeholders, representing IRC, resolving issues, and promoting long-term strategy.

Job Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree or Master’s Degree in a discipline associated with Behavioral Science (Economics, Psychology, Anthropology, Ethnography, Neuroscience, Social Sciences, Public Policy etc) or relevant work experience is required
Minimum 3 years’ experience in managing or coordinating research or innovation projects with multiple stakeholders.
Experience in the implementation of, and/or analyzing behavioral science qualitative research
Demonstrated experience of project management, relationship management, and working with behavioral science projects
Work experience in humanitarian setting or development contexts
Strong synthesis skills and confidence distilling complex data into actionable insights
Strong team collaboration skills; comfort working with researchers, frontline implementers, technical experts, clients, and other core staff
Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to communicate with colleagues and stakeholders at all levels in a distributed, multicultural professional environment to motivate the uptake of behaviorally-informed solutions.

Preferred:

Fluency in French, Spanish, Swahili and/or any other relevant languages spoken by the communities we work with.
Demonstrated experience designing or running rapid randomized controlled trials (A/B testing or other nimble evaluations) and/or in rapid prototyping of new behavioral interventions and iterating them in response to successive rounds of feedback.
Understanding of human-centered design, user testing, user story development, participatory action research, and other product development techniques
Understanding of educational interventions, climate, and/or health interventions, and experience working on such projects particularly in humanitarian settings.

Working Environment: