Associate Director, Curricula and Digital Learning

JOB TITLE: Associate Director, Curricula and Digital Learning

REPORTING TO:  Senior Director,  Impact, Research & Innovation 

DEPARTMENT:  Innovation and Learning

CLASSIFICATION LEVEL: Associate Director

LOCATION: Remote in Africa

ABOUT HEALTHY LEARNERS

Healthy Learners is an award-winning non-profit organisation working to improve the health and learning of children across Zambia—and soon, beyond. In partnership with the Government of Zambia, we bring healthcare directly into schools so that children stay healthy, stay in class, and reach their full potential. Our model is government-owned and government-led, fully embedded in national priorities, systems, and structures.

Today, we have 1,062 health rooms, trained 8,370 School Health Teachers, and operate in 𝟰𝟱 districts across all ten provinces, reaching more than 1.4 million learners through Zambia’s first integrated School Health Program. Our approach combines school-based service delivery with technical assistance to government at every level—strengthening planning, supervision, data use, and local capacity to deliver.

As we complete our national scale-up, we’re focused on deepening programme quality, strengthening delivery systems, and laying the foundation for long-term government leadership. We’re looking for a dynamic operational leader to help drive this next chapter—someone ready to manage complexity at scale and help a proven model achieve lasting impact.

Healthy Learners is the proud recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Innovation, the Duke F.M. Kirby Prize, and the Lipman Family Prize from the University of Pennsylvania. These awards reflect not just our success to date, but the strength of the opportunity ahead. If this mission resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you.

ABOUT YOU

You exemplify the qualities of being Humble, Hungry, and Smart in your leadership:

• Humble (Continuous Learning & Inclusion): You actively seek, encourage, and facilitate feedback sharing, fostering an environment of continuous learning. You adapt and grow continuously, cultivating a culture of inclusion and belonging.
• Hungry (Efficiency, Excellence, and Innovation): Your relentless drive for efficiency and excellence is evident in your approach to both everyday tasks and complex challenges. When obstacles arise, you don't merely seek answers; you develop solutions and establish structures to address future obstacles proactively. Your hunger for innovation permeates the organisation, where you eagerly explore new and best practices, ensuring our people's operations remain modern and highly effective.
• Smart (Emotional Intelligence & Psychological Safety): Your exceptional emotional intelligence is your superpower, allowing you to create psychological safety within the organization. Through your ability to build trust, encourage risk-taking, and nurture courageous conversations, you promote an environment where individuals can thrive and collaborate effectively.

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Associate Director, Curricula and Digital Learning will lead Healthy Learners’ work to strengthen, modernize, and digitize curricula and adult learning systems for the School Health Program. The role exists because Healthy Learners’ next phase of impact depends not only on what the programme delivers, but on how well adults across the system are trained, supported, and equipped to deliver it consistently.

This role connects directly to Healthy Learners’ mission by ensuring that the people closest to learners, that is the health teachers, school administrators, and other school-based actors have the knowledge, confidence, and tools they need to support children’s health and learning. As the programme expands across geographies and introduces more digital learning tools, this role will ensure that learning remains practical, user-centred, measurable, and aligned with government-owned scale.

The role will have indirect interaction with children. The primary users of the role’s work are adults, including teachers, school administrators, programme staff, and government partners. However, because the training and curricula produced through this role shape how adults support children in schools, the role must uphold Healthy Learners’ child safeguarding standards and ensure that all learning materials promote safe, respectful, inclusive, and child-centred practice.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Curricula and adult learning strategy

• Build and steward Healthy Learners’ curricula and adult learning strategy so training becomes a core driver of program quality, consistency, and scale.
• Ensure learning pathways, competencies, and outcomes are clearly defined for health teachers, school administrators, learner health captains, and other adult learners who support the School Health Program.
• Strengthen curricula as a strategic asset that supports implementation quality, government adoption, cross-country adaptation, and long-term sustainability.
• Position training as an ongoing learning system that enables adults to deliver the model with confidence, not simply as an onboarding activity.

2. Digital and blended learning transformation

• Lead the learning strategy behind Healthy Learners’ digital and blended learning investments so technology strengthens learning, practice, retention, and implementation quality.
• Ensure e-learning modules, refresher training, training applications, and digital learning products are grounded in adult learning principles and user realities.
• Partner with Digital Health to ensure digital learning tools are designed around meaningful learning outcomes, not only content delivery.
• Build a digital learning approach that supports scale by making training more consistent, reusable, adaptable, and cost-effective over time.

3. Instructional quality and content governance

• Build the standards, systems, and governance required for high-quality curriculum design, instructional design, content development, review, approval, version control, and localization.
• Ensure learning products are technically accurate, pedagogically strong, easy to use, and appropriate for school and government delivery contexts.
• Strengthen coherence across learning content for primary healthcare, supportive school environment, mental health, menstrual health, referrals, supervision, and related program areas.
• Ensure Healthy Learners has a disciplined content system that can evolve as the model deepens, adapts, and scales.

4. Learning effectiveness and continuous improvement

• Build a culture of continuous learning improvement so curricula, training content, and digital learning products evolve based on evidence, user experience, and implementation realities.
• Strengthen Healthy Learners’ ability to understand whether training improves knowledge, confidence, practice, and program quality.
• Work with Measurement, Analytics & Strategic Information to connect learning quality to implementation performance, supervision, fidelity, and scale readiness.
• Ensure learning investments generate insight that feeds back into curriculum design, training delivery, supervision, and program improvement.

5. Translation of evidence, innovation, and program change into learning products

• Build the bridge between evidence, innovation, program design, and frontline learning so program changes are translated into clear, usable training and implementation materials.
• Ensure innovation outputs, research findings, and program adaptations are incorporated into curricula, job aids, facilitation guides, refresher content, and digital learning products.
• Strengthen the pathway from pilot learning to routine implementation by ensuring new approaches are teachable, adoptable, and scalable.
• Ensure learning products help frontline teams and government partners understand not only what is changing, but how to implement change well.

6. Cross-functional and government-facing learning leadership

• Lead curriculum and learning design collaboration across Programmes, Innovation, Research, Measurement & Strategic Information, Digital Health, and government-facing teams.
• Build internal standards and capacity for high-quality learning design, content development, and digital learning.
• Ensure Healthy Learners’ curricula and training products are credible, adaptable, and usable assets for long-term government ownership.
• Strengthen the learning systems that allow Healthy Learners to scale with quality, consistency, affordability, and government readiness.

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience in education, curriculum design, instructional design, adult learning, digital learning, public health education, or a related field.
• Significant experience designing curricula, training systems, or learning programmes for adult learners.
• Strong understanding of adult learning principles and how to translate technical content into practical learning products.
• Experience developing or overseeing training modules, facilitation guides, learner materials, assessments, job aids, or e-learning content.
• Demonstrated ability to work across technical experts, programme teams, digital teams, and frontline users.
• Strong writing, editing, synthesis, and content quality assurance skills.
• Ability to build systems, standards, and processes that improve quality and consistency over time.

Preferred

• Experience designing learning systems for teachers, frontline health workers, community health workers, school administrators, or government personnel.
• Experience with blended learning, mobile learning, e-learning platforms, or low-bandwidth digital learning environments.
• Experience in public health, education, school health, or government-partnered programmes.
• Experience supervising instructional designers, content developers, consultants, or subject-matter experts.
• Familiarity with training analytics, learner assessment, competency-based learning, or evaluation of training effectiveness.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Opportunity for Impact: Play a pivotal role in implementing a program that improves health outcomes for millions of schoolchildren, shaping the future of communities across Africa.
• Competitive Compensation: Receive a competitive salary and benefits package that reflects your expertise and commitment.
• Professional Growth: Access ongoing training, leadership opportunities, and engage in innovative projects that challenge and inspire you.
• Supportive Culture: Join a passionate, dedicated team that values collaboration and mutual support, fostering an environment where all contributions are recognized.
• Networking Opportunities: Collaborate with international organizations and enhance your network and influence in the public health sector.