Finance & Innovation Capital Expert

School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator [link removed]) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, [link removed] operating as an independent initiative while being hosted by the World Food Programme (WFP). It is designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilizes resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most.   

The Accelerator’s mission: unlock the full potential of national school meal programs by improving design, scaling investment, and fostering collaboration across education, health, and food systems. It embraces a systems-thinking approach, adapts to country priorities, and thrives in deep collaboration among global, regional, and local actors. The Accelerator’s ambition: to help low- and lower-middle-income countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030, making school meals a cornerstone of human capital development and a global standard of care.  

The Accelerator operates in conditions of high complexity. Because it operates as a network facilitator rather than a traditional organization, its work spans multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.  
 

For this reason, the Accelerator has adopted a systemic leadership approach, which accepts that pathways to change are non-linear, and progress depends on learning, adaptation and collaboration across boundaries. Working in this way places ongoing demands on those involved and requires leaders who are able to work productively with uncertainty, difference and incomplete authority while maintaining accountability for results. Joining the Accelerator team therefore means being part of a first-of-its-kind development enterprise: a systems-focused effort to drive lasting, country-led change that requires a willingness to learn, adapt and be shaped by the work as it evolves.

School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilizes resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most.  
The Accelerator’s mission: unlock the full potential of national school meal programs by improving design, scaling investment, and fostering collaboration across education, health, and food systems. It embraces a systems-thinking approach, adapts to country priorities, and thrives in deep collaboration among global, regional, and local actors. The Accelerator’s ambition: to help low- and lower-middle-income countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030, making school meals a cornerstone of human capital development and a global standard of care. 
The Accelerator operates in conditions of high complexity. Because it operates as a network facilitator rather than a traditional organization, its work spans multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions. 

For this reason, the Accelerator has adopted a systemic leadership approach, which accepts that pathways to change are non-linear, and progress depends on learning, adaptation and collaboration across boundaries. Working in this way places ongoing demands on those involved and requires leaders who are able to work productively with uncertainty, difference and incomplete authority while maintaining accountability for results. Joining the Accelerator team therefore means being part of a first-of-its-kind development enterprise: a systems-focused effort to drive lasting, country-led change that requires a willingness to learn, adapt and be shaped by the work as it evolves.

As part of the Country Support Team, the Senior School Meals Finance & Innovative Capital Officer provides leadership across public finance and innovative capital mobilization to strengthen the financial foundations of national school meals systems. The role ensures countries can establish credible, sustainable, and investment‑ready financing architectures aligned with national priorities.
The position advances two core functions: (1) to position school meals within long term, domestically sustainable public financing; and (2) to position the initiative to attract and align concessional and commercial capital from Multilateral Development Banks, Development Finance Institutions, impact investors, philanthropic actors, corporates, and local financial institutions.
The role anchors system level engagement across key ministries and financial institutions, aligning public and private actors—together with the Sustainable Finance Initiative (SFI)—to strengthen the financing ecosystem underpinning national school meals systems. Through this leadership, the role ensures macroeconomic credibility, positions school meals to attract diverse forms of capital, and supports long‑term domestic financial sustainability, contributing to country‑led system transformation.
The postholder is also expected to assist in coordinating with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to maintain aligned approaches, shared messaging, and coherent support to countries.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive, within delegated authority):

• Lead the development and implementation of the fiscal strategy for school meals including macro‑fiscal and fiscal‑space analysis, developing medium‑ to long‑term cost projections, and ensuring financing strategies align with macroeconomic conditions and national priorities.

• Drive public‑expenditure and Public Financial Management (PFM) strengthening by overseeing Public Expenditure Reviews (PERs) and budget reviews, identifying alignment gaps and inefficiencies, and reinforcing budget classification, expenditure tracking, cash‑flow forecasting, commitment controls, and financial‑risk analysis (incl. inflation, food‑price volatility, foreign exchange sensitivity).

• Shape fiscal dialogue and long‑term financing pathways by producing evidence‑based trade‑offs and return-on-investment (ROI) cases and designing mitigation strategies for structural financing risks, including phased transitions toward greater domestic sustainability.

• Mobilize diverse capital sources by identifying and unlocking financing from Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), impact investors, philanthropic organizations, corporate partners, and local financial institutions, and by structuring blended‑finance approaches aligned with national priorities and fiscal‑sustainability needs.

• Advance innovative financing instruments—including Results‑Based Financing (RBF), Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), Development Impact Bonds (DIBs), outcome funds, guarantee instruments, pooled financing vehicles, and thematic bonds—by structuring, sequencing, and scaling mechanisms, and developing investment cases outlining expected returns, impact metrics, governance, and risk‑sharing.

• Shape investor alignment and enabling environments by negotiating terms and risk‑mitigation structures, crowding in capital along the school‑meals value chain, and strengthening regulatory and Public/Private Partnership frameworks to safeguard public interest and fiscal sustainability.

• Guide governments to design or update multisectoral national school meals plans by defining priority sectors beyond education and overseeing diagnostics of cross‑sector gaps, bottlenecks, and opportunities.

• Strengthen the national school meals ecosystem by convening additional actors—local governments, civil society, farmer organizations, private‑sector suppliers, academia, and community groups—and clarifying roles and contributions.

• Enable governments to translate priorities and technical needs into concrete partnership opportunities by connecting them with the right expertise and testing/validating collaboration models for coordinated effective support.

• Oversee technical assistance with partners, ensuring agreements align with government priorities, instituting feedback loops on implementation, and securing timely progress updates.

• Establish and reinforce national and subnational coordination platforms by enabling governments to convene and align ministries, local authorities, civil society, private‑sector actors, and academia around shared school meals goals.

• Champion systems‑leadership capacity by strengthening government and country‑team skills in systems thinking, coordination, relational practice, and multisectoral problem‑solving.

• Oversee multisectoral ecosystem performance and partner coordination around national plans, synthesizing insights that drive adaptive learning and inform SMA’s global strategy and partnership model.

• Foster cohesive ways of working across country teams, SFI, ministries, and financing partners by ensuring clear interfaces, disciplined coordination, transparent information flows, and timely resolution of cross‑sector or partnership challenges.

• Model SMA’s systemic leadership culture by building trust in complex multistakeholder settings, engaging inclusively with diverse actors, and promoting reflective, solutions‑focused collaboration that strengthens collective learning and coherence.

• Institutionalize financial learning by generating benchmarks, sustainability indicators, and efficiency insights that strengthen transparency, inform adaptive adjustments, and illuminate system‑level opportunities.

• Drive continuous improvement by refining financial models responsive to macroeconomic shifts and by capturing and sharing lessons on blended and innovative finance to guide adaptive strategy and peer learning across SMA.

This role operates within the School Meals Accelerator’s systemic leadership approach. All SMA roles are expected to be enacted in line with the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework, which sets out six shared leadership mindsets, core leadership practices and more systemically demanding practices, that guide how we work in complex, fast-changing environments. The Framework also describes “ways of engaging with complexity”, which reflect how individuals make sense of and act in uncertain, interdependence situations.

While developmental maturity and role seniority are independent, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade to support clarity and fairness in recruitment and early employment.

For this P4 role, the minimum expectation is:

Reflective engagement with complexity: “People are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment”.

As set out in the Framework, these expectations represent floors, not ceilings. Ways of engaging with complexity are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or performance management, and are used to support reflection, learning and development over time, rather than ranking or judgement.

All roles in the School Meals Accelerator are expected to be enacted in line with the Systemic Leadership Framework. In recruitment and selection, the Framework supports informed conversations about how candidates make sense of complexity, uncertainty and systemic change, alongside assessment of technical expertise and role fit.

In ongoing work, the Framework provides a shared orientation to “how we work here” and supports individual and collective learning over time.

Education: Advanced university degree in Finance, Economics, Development Finance, Public Policy, Public Administration, Development Economics, or another relevant field; or a first university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience and/or advanced training.
 

Experience:

• At least eight years of progressively senior experience in public finance, development finance, blended‑finance structuring, investment analysis, or sovereign/public‑sector financing in government or international development settings.

• Extensive experience engaging ministries of finance and sectoral ministries (education, agriculture, health, social protection) on fiscal strategy, budget planning, expenditure reviews, and medium‑term fiscal analysis—supporting national programme financing.

• Demonstrated track record mobilizing capital with Multilateral Development Banks, Development Finance Institutions, impact investors, philanthropic actors, private financial institutions, and other global partners to shape financing solutions and blended‑finance structures.

• Demonstrated international experience collaborating with diverse partners (governments, International Financial Institutions, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, academia) across regions and organizational levels.

• Substantial experience translating complex macro‑fiscal and financial analysis into decision‑ready strategies, investment cases, and policy recommendations for senior government counterparts and development partners.

• Deep mastery of public financial management systems, including budget formulation and execution, expenditure tracking, treasury operations, cash‑flow forecasting, commitment controls, and financial reporting standards.

• Strong command of macro‑fiscal modelling, costing methodologies, and financial‑risk analysis, including inflation indexation and sensitivity assessments related to food‑price and exchange‑rate volatility.

• Advanced capability in structuring blended‑finance instruments and innovative financing mechanisms, such as results‑based financing, guarantee structures, pooled vehicles, and thematic/social bonds.

• Ability to develop bankable investment cases that articulate economic returns, social‑impact metrics, governance frameworks, and balanced risk‑sharing arrangements for governments and investors.

• Exceptional analytical and communication skills, enabling the distillation of complex financial concepts into clear, strategic options and narratives for senior policymakers, investors, and multistakeholder audiences.

• Strong systems‑leadership and relational capabilities, including working with uncertainty, leveraging diverse perspectives, enabling collaborative problem‑solving, and maintaining effective relationships across political and cultural contexts.

Language: Fluency (level C) in English language. Intermediate knowledge (level B) of a second official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish).

This is an International Professional position, open to candidates of all nationalities.
The selected candidate will be appointed on a fixed-term contract for an initial period of two years, with the possibility of renewal based on operational requirements, performance, and the availability of funding. The probationary period will be one year.
This position is open to both internal and external applicants. For candidates currently employed at WFP on a rotational Fixed-Term Contract, acceptance of an offer with the School Meals Accelerator will be subject to the contractual terms outlined in Annex 3 (Staffing Management), under the Fixed-Term Contractual Modalities described in Section 1.1. This includes provisions related to return rights and other applicable conditions.

WFP offers an attractive compensation and benefits package in line with ICSC standards (http://icsc.un.org) including basic salary, post adjustment, relocation entitlement, visa, travel and shipment allowances, 30 days’ annual leave, home leave, an education grant for dependent children, a pension plan, and medical insurance.
The selected candidate will be required to relocate to Rome, Italy to take up this assignment.
 

The School Meals Accelerator (SMA) works in conditions of high complexity, spanning multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system-level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.
To support effective leadership in this context, the SMA has articulated a Systemic Leadership Framework. The Framework provides a shared language and reference point for how leadership is understood and enacted across the organisation and is used across recruitment, onboarding, feedback and learning.
This annex provides a high-level overview of the content of the Framework.

At the heart of the SMA Systemic Leadership Framework are six leadership mindsets.
These mindsets describe shared orientations that shape how situations are interpreted, what is treated as data, and what kinds of action feel legitimate or possible in system-level change work.

They are not competencies or values statements, but shared ways of making sense of complex situations that shape leadership practice, particularly under pressure or uncertainty.

The six SMA leadership mindsets are:

• We see systems change as starting with us: We notice and work with how our roles, assumptions and responses shape what becomes possible in the system.

• We experiment our way forward: We use disciplined experimentation and learning to make progress in conditions of uncertainty.

• We value different perspectives: even when they clash: We work productively with difference, tension and disagreement to support learning and systemic change.

• We put countries’ needs first: We orient our work around the priorities, contexts and capacities of countries, rather than organisational convenience or external agendas.

• We teach and learn from one another: We treat learning as a shared, ongoing responsibility and use every day work as a source of individual and collective development.

• We are intentional about how and when we act: not simply defaulting to urgency: We treat pace and timing as deliberate leadership choices, choosing actions that support learning and lasting change rather than activity for its own sake.

The mindsets are mutually reinforcing rather than sequential. Effective systemic leadership involves working across all of them, rather than privileging one at the expense of others.

Within each mindset, the Framework identifies leadership practices that describe observable ways of working — how leadership shows up in action.

The Accelerator has 30 core leadership practices (5 per mindset), which are foundational practices expected of everyone working in the Accelerator, regardless of role or grade. They support effective participation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

Two broad categories of practice are described:

• Core leadership practices. These are foundational practices expected of everyone working in the Accelerator, regardless of role or grade. They support effective participation in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

• More systemically demanding leadership practices. These practices place greater demands on attention, reflexivity and systemic awareness. They often involve working across boundaries, engaging with power and conflict, and staying in learning under conditions of ambiguity or risk.

The distinction is not hierarchical or prescriptive. It exists to make visible differences in demand, not differences in worth, permission or status.

The Framework also describes different ways of engaging with complexity, drawing on adult development theory.

Ways of engaging with complexity describe how leadership practices are enacted, not which practices are permitted. They are descriptive rather than evaluative, are not tied mechanically to seniority or role, and are context sensitive.

The Framework describes four broad ways of engaging with complexity:

• Habitual engagement. People tend to respond to situations through familiar roles, routines and immediate reactions. What is felt or thought in the moment tends to drive action, with limited separation between observation, interpretation and response, especially under pressure.

• Reflective engagement. People are increasingly able to step back from experience and notice their assumptions and reactions, often after the event. Reflection supports learning and adjustment over time, though it is not yet consistently available in the moment.

• Intentional engagement. People actively work with their assumptions, emotions and roles as part of ongoing practice. They are better able to pause, make deliberate choices about how to respond, and adapt their actions in real time under conditions of uncertainty.

• Systemic engagement. People understand their actions as part of wider system dynamics shaped by relationships, power, history and context. They act with awareness of timing, ripple effects and shared responsibility, and are able to support learning and capacity beyond their own role.

    
These ways of engaging with complexity do not represent a linear progression or a single “ideal” endpoint. Individuals may operate in different ways in different situations.

To support clarity and fairness, the SMA sets minimum developmental expectations by grade, which represent floors, not ceilings.

The SMA Systemic Leadership Framework is:

• a shared developmental reference for leadership practice;

• a basis for reflection, feedback and learning;

• a way of embedding systemic leadership expectations into everyday work.

It is not:

• a competency framework;

• a performance rating system;

• a leadership pipeline;

• a tool for ranking or scoring individuals.

As the School Meals Accelerator is generously hosted within the World Food Programme’s facilities and administrative systems, we benefit from—and uphold—WFP’s strong commitment to integrity, inclusion, safety, and respect.

All hiring decisions are based on role requirements, merits, and the strengths each candidate brings, including their alignment with the Accelerator’s core mindsets and behaviors as per its Systemic Leadership Framework. In line with WFP—our hosting organization—the Accelerator is committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment, free from discrimination, harassment, abuse of authority, and any form of sexual exploitation or abuse. As part of this commitment, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Lastly, no appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.