Head of Engagement Team and Deputy Director

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 [link removed]) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, [link removed] 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.

The Head of Engagement Team is a senior role in the Accelerator, reporting directly to the Director. The role leads and shapes the Accelerator’s political level engagement, positions the initiative to unlock strategic support, cultivates high value networks, and strengthens the high level relationships required to sustain a favorable authorizing environment.

The postholder oversees and stewards the Accelerator’s Governance Committee—partnering with its Chair and members to enable meaningful co‑creation—and builds and maintains strategic relationships with the Chairs of the School Meals Coalition and its Secretariat, as well as the Support Mechanism of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and other priority stakeholders.

The role defines, elevates, and amplifies the Accelerator’s narrative and supports the Director’s public positioning, articulating results and impact while expressing the initiative’s ethos and systemic way of working through innovative forms of storytelling. The postholder acts as Officer-in-Charge in the absence of the Director, maintaining continuity in decision-making, performance and accountability.

The postholder is also expected to align, coordinate, and synchronize efforts with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to ensure coherent approaches, shared messaging, and integrated support to countries.

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

Strategic leadership and execution:

• Support the development and execution of the Accelerator’s strategy and annual plans in close partnership with the Director.

• Translate strategic direction into clear priorities, objectives, and resourcing plans, while retaining flexibility to adapt in response to learning, feedback, and changing contexts.

• Support the Director in overseeing the execution of strategic decisions by establishing performance and quality‑assurance mechanisms that enable timely course‑correction while preserving learning, experimentation, and adaptive practice, and ensuring coherence with WFP policies, governance requirements, and HQ processes.

• Serve as Officer‑in‑Charge in the absence of the Director, ensuring continuity of leadership, decision‑making, risk management, and external engagement.

Strategic engagement & Leadership Coordination:

• Lead and expand SMA’s high‑level external engagement by positioning the Accelerator in priority political and institutional arenas and cultivating influential networks that reinforce SMA’s authorizing environment.

• Advise the Director with timely political intelligence, stakeholder analysis, and strategic counsel to inform engagement priorities, partnerships, and external influence.

• Lead the consolidation of engagement‑related information flows across country, technical, and operational teams, ensuring leadership receives well‑synthesized inputs on cross‑cutting priorities, risks, and emerging issues.

• Strengthen alignment across SMA by stewarding leadership routines, decision‑making rhythms, and clear communication pathways that translate decisions into coordinated action.

Governance Stewardship & Institutional Coordination:

• Steward the effective functioning of SMA’s Governance Committee by partnering with the Chair and members to shape strategic agendas, surface tensions, and frame choices around risks, resources, and system‑wide implications.

• Translate insights from across SMA into decision‑ready framing that supports sound judgement in a complex systems context.

• Ensure governance discipline by clarifying roles and timelines, tracking follow‑through on decisions, and strengthening governance routines, documentation, and review processes.

Strategic Narratives & Leadership Sense-Making:

• Shape and evolve the Accelerator’s overarching narrative so it conveys SMA’s systemic ethos, emerging impact, and political relevance. Draw on insights from governance, partnerships, country engagement, and internal processes to support shared understanding of how change is unfolding and why it matters.

• Strengthen and amplify the Director’s leadership voice through strategic framing, narrative arcs, and messaging that communicate both progress and learning, and work closely with storytelling and communications colleagues to ensure coherence across all public‑facing products and reinforcement of SMA’s credibility, strategic intent, and distinctive way of working.

• Model and champion SMA’s systemic leadership mindsets, demonstrating sound judgement, political and cultural acuity, and the ability to steward complex relationships and decisions across a multi‑country institutional ecosystem.

• Cultivate and sustain a high‑trust, high‑performance culture by promoting shared leadership standards, embedding disciplined communication and predictable working rhythms, and strengthening coordination across country, operational, technical, and narrative teams.

• Drive and institutionalize learning across SMA’s leadership and engagement functions by capturing and synthesizing insights from governance processes, external relationships, and political engagement, and feeding these into strategy, delivery, and institutional positioning.

• Embed reflective practice and continuous improvement by leading and contributing to after-action reviews, leadership reflections, and learning sessions, and by codifying lessons into tools, guidance, and protocols that strengthen SMA’s systemic leadership and engagement practices over time.

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 P5 role, the minimum expectation is:

Intentional way of engaging with complexity: “the staff member actively works 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”.

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 Public Administration, International Development, International Relations, Organizational Development, Business or Management, Political Science, Public Policy, or another relevant field; or a first university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience and/or advanced training.

• At least eleven years of progressively senior leadership experience advising or supporting high‑level officials in complex international, political, or multi‑stakeholder environments, shaping strategy, informing decision‑making, and stewarding high‑stakes institutional relationships.

• Demonstrated international experience forging and sustaining collaboration with diverse partners—including governments, International Financial Institutions, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, and academia—across regions and organisational hierarchies.

• Proven experience leading high‑level political and institutional engagement, including navigating sensitive contexts, managing tensions, and representing senior leadership with diplomacy, judgement, and contextual intelligence.

• Track record of shaping and strengthening governance bodies (e.g., steering committees, advisory groups), including designing agendas, synthesizing strategic inputs, framing decisions, and ensuring robust follow‑through for senior actors.

• Substantial experience driving strategic communications and narrative development, including crafting executive messages, speeches, and strategic materials that influence institutional partners, donors, and opinion leaders and enhance organisational positioning.

• Exceptional communication and narrative crafting capability, able to architect high impact messages, strategic stories, and speeches tailored to senior audiences, political moments, and system level dynamics.

• Strong strategic judgement and political acuity, with the ability to interpret and anticipate complex institutional and political dynamics and advise senior leadership with clarity, foresight, and nuance.

• Advanced analytical and synthesis skills, able to distil technical, political, and country level insights into crisp, decision ready briefs that drive alignment, illuminate tradeoffs, and strengthen sound governance.

• Expertise in strategic communications, storytelling, and reputational risk management, ensuring that messaging is coherent, credible, and aligned with SMA’s systemic ethos and institutional identity.

• High level facilitation and coordination skills, enabling effective leadership routines, structured decision processes, and disciplined follow through across diverse teams, governance mechanisms, and multi country constellations.

• Strong interpersonal, diplomatic, and relational intelligence, able to build trust, steward sensitive relationships, and exercise mature judgement when engaging senior officials and navigating politically complex scenarios, in line with SMA’s systemic leadership approach.

Languages: Fluency (level C) in English; intermediate (level B) in 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 [link removed]) 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 put countries’ needs first: We orient our work around the priorities, contexts and capacities of countries, rather than organisational convenience or external agendas.

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

• We teach and learn from one another: We treat learning as a shared, ongoing responsibility and use everyday 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.