THE CHILDREN'S INVESTMENT FUND FOUNDATION (UK)

Description

The Business Lead, SRHR, is a senior operational and strategic partner to the Programme Excellence, Executive Director, SRHR and the SRHR Leadership Team, responsible for driving operational excellence, financial stewardship, and critical team leadership responsibilities. This role ensures the effective delivery of CIFF’s SRHR objectives through best-in-class management practices, innovation in AI application, and exemplary leadership of the team EA & Analyst cadre.

Success measures are structured against three key areas in ‘role’s responsibilities’: Delivering 1) Operational Excellence, 2) Finance Process Management, 3) Team leadership. The role directly line manages at least one FTE, plus fixed term administrative staff over time, and will task manage four Analyst roles.

Requirements

Operational Excellence:

Operational Excellence

The SRHR team aims to be best-in-class in streamlining its operations and allocating its resources to support effective programme management, notably around strong adherence to team planning processes, strong leadership engagement support and effective use of knowledge management tools, including AI. i. The Business Lead will input to:

Team and sector planning:

• Responsible for planning the annual schedule of SRHR events, co-ordinating schedules, supporting funding approvals and ensuring relevant materials are in place.
• Responsible for organising and co-ordinating the logistics for at least 3 SRHR global events per year (and other events as required).
• Lead the coordination of presentation planning and preparation (ensuring timelines are met for preparation, sign-off), participation planning (who and rationale) and cost management, and ensuring priorities for meetings and preparatory work with apex-stakeholders (especially high-level representatives from Govt and strategic partners) are in place and met for ED and Director, Programme Excellence.
• Provide close oversight of overall travel planning, right-sizing trip attendance, ensuring travel logistics are completed well in advance, and ensuring early engagement with LT on terms of reference.
• Responsible for ensuring other teams are consulted as necessary, in particular, External Affairs, Operations and EGY.
• Build capacity of EA team to support effective planning for the director cadre.

PIC Management:

• Supporting the Director, Programme Excellence, responsible for leading the management of the PIC preparation process for the SRHR portfolio, including scheduling and driving the yearly planning of IM’s and strategies and Mission Excellence Forum slots.
• Proactively managing work process and document timelines, ensuring timely and adequate communication to the team and ensuring the review of leaders to ensure dispatch of final documents on time and to a high standard. There are usually 3-5 new investments and 5+ formal briefings every year in the portfolio.

Knowledge Management:

• Build and maintain an excellent file management, making recommendations for changes in approach.
• Act as the steward for historic tools and presentations for leadership and external engagement, avoiding duplication of effort and internal-learning is maximised, and PIC/Board-facing materials are best-in-class.
• Building on knowledge of SRHR priorities and sector mission goals, proactively design team and LT meeting agendas, resolving any incomplete conflicting data to ensure supporting knowledge-sharing and strategic scaling, in collaboration with the Director, Programme Excellence.

• Lead on developing any team-specific operational guidance, where capacity building needs have been noted by the Director-Programe Excellence or Portfolio Finance Manager, working with SRHR and cross-organisational team members as needed.
• Partner management: Build fit-for-purpose approach, using CRM and/or other tools, for tracking action items and partnership asks from apex-stakeholder conversations, working with the Director-Strategic Partnerships, Director, Programme Excellence and the CEO Office. Proactively identifying solutions to resolve any issues.
• Risk management: Lead cross -team efforts to instil key risk-management protocols (such as comms protocols, file management, training) and oversee sector engagement with organisational compliance team – notably safeguarding – under the guidance of the COO/PD Programme Excellence, elevating risks quickly to ED.
• Lead team application of relevant tools including AI through target use cases: Specifically, Portia narratives, calendar planning, presentations, anticipating future requirements.
• Efficient allocation of resources: Direct oversight of $2M+ annual Opex budget, maintain robust systems to closely tracking spend, devising and identifying management actions and solutions to resolve potential budget over-runs. Proactively lead the follow up and hold parties to account for resolving management actions. Manage coordinated travel so CIFF staff and partners are fully aligned, minimising duplication of effort.
• Responsible for preparing monthly operations updates for the leadership team, working closely with the Director, Programme Excellence and FBP in reporting against operational KPIs and identifying and tracking completion of management actions.

Financial Process Management:

The SRHR team goal is to ensure disbursement of >$200M delivers against team and organisational Missions, maximises efficiency in financial processes and effective use of CIFF funding to achieve impact. The Business Lead will:

• Partner with Portfolio Finance Manager to support financial processes, to take direct accountability for <5% exceptions, efficient management of our disbursement targets and pulling together monthly analytics and insights for the PFM to use for management actions.
• Manage engagement between Portfolio Finance and Analyst cadre to ensure active management and foresight over contracting and disbursement risk, ensuring any slippage can be compensated.
• Responsible for monthly review of Fluxx & PowerBI for anomalies and support the Finance Partner to work with the analyst cadre to correct (missing grant cards, incorrect grant dates, incorrect team members), following up to ensure completion.
• Serve as the Fluxx, PowerBI and Certify super user for the team. Take the lead on ensuring all new team members receive a strong individual systems induction within their first month at CIFF. Regularly solicit the team for systems improvements and escalate to the relevant teams, as needed.
• Lead on developing any team-specific operational guidance, where capacity building needs have been noted by the Portfolio Finance Manager, working with SRHR and cross-organisational team members as needed.
• Be a core member of the 4-person sector financial management team (+ ED, COO, Portfolio Finance Manager).

Team Leadership:

Team Leadership

The SRHR team aims to embed a team culture of continuous improvement through coaching, professional development, and performance management for strategic scaling. The Business Lead role will

• Line manage the executive assistant and team assistant, ensuring best-in-class support to the ED and Directors.
• Take accountability for overseeing the Analyst responsibilities for financial administration, calendar and travel planning for their respective Director and sub-team, and operations, are appropriately completed, providing training and sharing best practices as appropriate.
• Promote a culture of openness, trust, and ongoing learning, using a coaching style to unite the team and drive performance.
• Coordinate with HR to proactively ensure a detailed onboarding is in place for all new joiners. Supporting in coordinating interviews as required. Co-ordinate with HR to manage staff offboarding process in SRHR.
• Lead on the planning of and conduct team building and wellbeing activities, working closely with HR, carefully delegating to relevant parties in the team as needed, promoting friendly, trusting, energetic, positive and collaborative spirit among the team aligned with CIFF’s people strategy to facilitate a positive working environment where staff feel and are able to deliver their best work.
• Oversee the coordination of different CIFF internal functions, proactively coordinate and optimise processes to facilitate adequate information sharing and optimise the decision making of the SRHR team.
• Serve as the point of coordination for selecting SRHR team members to represent the team on various internal fora and committees, in consultation with LT, with a focus on ensuring value add for the SRHR team and growth opportunities for team members. Support and coordinate team members to share the information from these fora back to the wider team.

Benefits

The starting salary for this role is £50,000.

CIFF operates a hybrid working policy across all locations which means employees work some of the time from home. We are happy to provide more information on this as part of the recruitment process.

Alongside a competitive salary, we offer a generous benefits package at CIFF that includes, but is not limited to the following. All these will be prorated to the fixed term.

• Annual leave - 25 days per annum. Increasing by 1 day after each year of srvice to a maximum of 30 days.
• Bonus - CIFF currently operates a discretionary bonus scheme
• Training allowance
• Wellbeing allowance
• Life insurance
• Medical insurance

Please submit your application on or before 27 January 2026. CIFF reserves the right to close the job advert early if we receive a high number of suitable applications.

Our approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

CIFF is a place where everyone can grow, develop and fulfil their potential, and we welcome applications from all candidates who meet the requirements of our roles, regardless of their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, national origin, cultural or ethnic background, disability, marital status, religious identity or age.

We are committed to making reasonable accommodations for any prospective or existing CIFF employees with disabilities. If an accommodation is needed to participate in our recruitment process, or to perform essential job functions once in role, please make your recruiter aware so we can ensure you are given the support you need.