Policy Manager- J-PAL North America

About J-PAL North America

J-PAL North America, a research center within the Economics department at MIT, seeks an experienced Policy Manager to join its team and contribute to its mission to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL North America conducts randomized evaluations, builds partnerships for evidence-informed policymaking, and helps partners scale up effective programs. As a regional office of the global Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, J-PAL North America leverages research by affiliated professors from universities across the world to generate and disseminate rigorous evidence about which anti-poverty social policies work and why.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion is essential to address the complex causes and consequences of poverty. To advance our mission, J-PAL North America must draw on diverse experiences from our staff and affiliated researchers in order to ask better questions and identify better solutions. We are working to increase the limited representation of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in the economics profession. Our organization is implementing strategies to attract, develop, and advance a diverse staff and building a pipeline to increase diversity among economic researchers. We are committed to engaging in self-reflection, learning, and dialogue to nurture understanding across differences. Together, we will build an equitable, inclusive culture where everyone is respected, empowered, and heard.

To learn more about our work and team culture, see our Join Our Team brochure or visit www.povertyactionlab.org/na. 

Opportunity Overview

As a member of the J-PAL North America team, you’ll be part of a Nobel-prize winning scientific movement that can transform US policy making. The Policy Manager will lead J-PAL North America’s ongoing partnerships with philanthropic foundations, policymakers, and implementing partners. As a Policy Manager, your primary responsibilities will involve people management, stakeholder engagement, sector expertise, research proposal management, and policy outreach and communications. This is an opportunity to lead the development and implementation of significant portions of the organization’s health policy strategy and advance J-PAL North America’s partnerships with key stakeholders to ensure that evidence contributes to public discourse around some of the most pressing questions in social policy.  The Policy Manager will work closely with leading health economists and health care leaders to advance the efforts of  J-PAL North America’s US Health Care Delivery Initiative (HCDI) to support randomized evaluations of strategies that aim to make health care delivery in the United States more efficient, effective, and equitable. The Policy Manager will also play a significant role in the work of the MIT Roybal Center for Translational Research to Improve Health Care for the Aging by supporting randomized evaluations of low-cost, high-impact behavioral interventions to improve health care delivery and health outcomes for older adults in the United States.

For our Policy Manager position, we are looking for candidates with an understanding of impact evaluation, familiarity with economics and statistics, knowledge about social policy, public administration, and program implementation, excellent oral and written communication skills, attention to detail, strong project management and people management skills, and who can take ownership of their work independently and effectively lead, inspire and supervise direct reports or teams.  Experience with health policy or research is strongly preferred. We seek applicants from diverse backgrounds and welcome applications from candidates who have lived or direct experience with the social policy issues that J-PAL North America aims to address through its work.  

Responsibilities

Sector expertise (25%): Develop expertise in one or more of J-PAL North America’s sectors, with a primary focus on the health sector, and lead J-PAL North America’s policy outreach in this sector. Work with J-PAL North America’s academic leadership to identify policy lessons from J-PAL affiliates’ research. Provide feasibility assessments and initial analyses of policies and programs that might be well-suited for rigorous evaluations. Conduct research and analysis for policy memos, grant proposals, and publications. Lead sector-specific fundraising efforts and research development efforts.

Stakeholder engagement (20%): Maintain strong relationships with J-PAL North America’s key partners in government, non-profits, foundations, and the private sector. Initiate and build partnerships with groups across the region to identify new opportunities for rigorous evaluation of social policies. Provide technical and project management support to policymakers and practitioners as they develop evaluations. Engage in building and managing relationships with new and existing donors for J-PAL North America’s health sector, preparing and pitching funding proposals, and reporting to donors. 

Research proposal management (20%): Lead Requests for Proposals that provide funding and technical assistance to support randomized evaluations, including promoting funding opportunities among academic researchers and implementing partners, managing the application and review processes, and drafting reports to philanthropic funders and policymakers on the progress of evaluations and lessons learned from program implementation. 

People and team management (20%): Manage day-to-day work portfolio and overall professional development of Senior Policy Associates and Policy Associates. Assist in recruitment of new members of J-PAL North America’s policy team. Contribute to the design and creation of new systems and modifications to existing systems to maximize functionality and effectiveness across the policy team.

Policy communication and outreach (15%): Create briefs, literature reviews, other publications, and presentations to communicate proposed, ongoing, and completed research by J-PAL affiliated professors. Organize convenings designed to spur new research collaborations and share policy lessons from completed research and represent J-PAL North America at external events and in meetings with senior decision-makers. 

Compensation & Benefits

This full-time, exempt position is classified by MIT as a Research Associate position and currently offers a fixed market-based salary range that is based on experience, with the opportunity for annual salary increases each January, based on MIT’s annual salary review.

J-PAL North America staff are MIT employees, which means they are eligible for a wide array of institutional benefits. Some of these MIT benefits include comprehensive health insurance, a 401(k) match up to 5% of salary plus a pension-based retirement plan, tuition assistance up to $5,250 per calendar year, commuter benefits, access to MyLifeServices, a generous vacation policy (3 weeks of paid vacation in your first year, and 4 weeks every year after that, plus an additional 13+ paid Institute-wide holidays per year and a winter break), ample paid leave for sick time, maternity and parental leave, back-up child care benefits and much more.

Professional Development

J-PAL North America supports a culture of learning, with opportunities to attend weekly seminars, engage in small-group discussions with other J-PAL staff, participate in workshops, and take classes for credit at MIT or elsewhere with our generous tuition assistance program and professional development benefits. Policy Managers have the opportunity to work directly with J-PAL affiliated professors and directors, as well as interact with policymakers and practitioners. J-PAL staff who meet or exceed performance expectations are generally eligible for promotion within 2-3 years depending on organizational needs and budget.

Qualifications

• Commitment to Mission & Values:  Cares personally and deeply about policy that has the potential to reduce poverty and the rigorous research that informs it. Demonstrates interest in poverty alleviation in the North American (primarily the United States) context in particular. Demonstrates a commitment to J-PAL North America’s values.
• Education: Master’s degree in economics, public policy, public administration, business administration or a closely related field strongly preferred. Understanding of statistics and quantitative methods is required. 
• Experience: Six or more years of accumulated experience, including at least four years of full-time, post-undergraduate experience and prior experience managing staff. Experience with health policy or research is strongly preferred.
• Technical Skills: Actively demonstrates the technical skills and expertise necessary to successfully complete their own responsibilities, ensure the quality of others’ work, and cultivate technical skills in more junior or newer staff. Can apply technical skills and expertise across a wide range of formats and external audiences with minimal supervision. This includes the ability to accurately explain concepts related to randomized evaluation and other impact evaluation methodologies, including research design, study implementation, results, and/or data systems on a wide variety of projects, drawing across J-PAL studies, other RCTs, and from other sectors/disciplines, assessing the feasibility and design of randomized evaluations, and training junior level staff and external partners on technical concepts
• Ownership of work: Takes responsibility/is accountable for making decisions and exercising independent judgment on projects/teams. Manages a variety of short and long term projects, effectively managing their time and communications with supervisors. Effectively prioritizes their own work and that of direct and indirect reports. Demonstrates ability to successfully navigate situations where there is uncertainty around next steps. Accurately identifies routine tasks and requests as being in or out of scope and responds appropriately to the request. Escalates to supervisor if in doubt about whether a non-routine request is in/out of scope. Effectively identifies opportunities to improve or expand work within existing strategic priorities. Takes responsibility for work of direct reports being completed on time and professionally/accurately/at the level of quality needed.
• Written Communications: Accurately, succinctly, and persuasively communicates in writing to a wide range of internal and external stakeholders with minimal to no supervision. Represents J-PAL North America externally to high-level external audiences with minimal supervision. Proposes the structure and scope of written materials and edits the work of others, providing feedback on writing style, grammar, tone, and structure. 
• Oral Communications: Demonstrates strong active listening skills and accurately, succinctly, and persuasively communicates information orally to staff, researchers, external partners, and high-level external audiences (e.g., foundations, senior staff at external organizations, policymakers) with minimal director-level supervision. Proposes the structure and scope of presentations or other oral communications. Adapts communication style and tone to the audience. Provides feedback on presentation style and structure to colleagues.
• External Stakeholder Relations: Leads partnership development between researchers and potential implementing partners and supervises junior staff on maintaining existing relationships. Manages engagements with existing high level external partners (e.g., funders, media, high-level project contacts). Able to seek and develop new partnerships with high-level external partners with minimal supervision.
• Task & Project Management: Generates, develops goals and strategy for, and supervises a core area of work and teams within the vertical, ensures that activities within the area of work are done on time and done well, and guides and ensures professional quality of final work product by junior-level staff. Delegates tasks or projects effectively. Effectively allocates projects and tasks to employees to achieve balanced workloads that accomplish set goals and help the employee develop professionally. Coordinates efforts of all project stakeholders. Identifies need for additional staffing or resources.  
• Problem Solving/Decision-making: Demonstrates adeptness at analyzing facts, good judgment, and strong decision-making ability. Identifies and responds to problems, issues, and opportunities, and identifies relevant constraints. Seeks to identify a solution or response. Identifies who must be consulted on decision-making and problem-solving and who must approve decisions. Seeks input from others for appropriate courses of action. Ensures buy-in and understanding of the decision as relevant. Take responsibility for decisions made and executed. 
• People Management: Supervises associates, senior associates and/or interns and demonstrates effectiveness in leading, inspiring and supervising direct reports or teams. Provides candid feedback to and about colleagues including managers and direct reports. Seeks feedback and areas for improvement. Willingly receives and acts on feedback. 
• Travel: Willingness and ability to travel as needed to attend events or participate in meetings.

How to Apply

Ready to join a team of collaborative, inclusive, and inquisitive colleagues? Apply now. 

Submit an application via MIT’s human resources system. Visit http://jobs.mit.edu/external, search for job ID 22813 (Policy Manager - J-PAL North America), and complete an application. 

In a single PDF uploaded to the resume field, please include:

Resume

Cover letter which briefly addresses the following questions (no more than 1-2 pages): 

1. Tell us about your interest in poverty alleviation in the North America region, especially in the US, and what personal or work experiences have you had that demonstrate your commitment to J-PAL North America’s mission, values and DEI commitments?
2. What experiences have you had with quantitative policy/social science research, and how they have prepared you to be effective in this Policy Manager role? If you have experience with health policy or research please speak to this specifically.
3. What experience do you have with managing people or teams?
4. What experience do you have with working on fundraising proposals, soliciting funding or managing/reporting on grant or gift funded programs?

In your cover letter, please also consider sharing how your racial, gender, socioeconomic, and/or other identity has influenced your drive and desire to work at J-PAL (this is entirely optional).

We will begin reviewing applications on a rolling basis as we receive them. We have a target deadline of June 28th to close this job posting, but we may continue to accept applications after this deadline. Short-listed applicants will be asked to complete a technical exercise and phone interview. Finalists will be called for a final interview.

MIT is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.

This position is not eligible for any type of visa sponsorship.

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