Associate Director, Measurement, Analytics & Strategic Information

JOB TITLE: Associate Director, Measurement, Analytics & Strategic Information

REPORTING TO:  Senior Director,  Impact, Research & Innovation | Monitoring & Evaluation

DEPARTMENT:  Monitoring & Evaluation

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, Measurement, Analytics & Strategic Information will lead Healthy Learners’ measurement, analytics, and strategic information function. The role exists because Healthy Learners’ next phase of impact depends on our ability to generate trusted data, interpret it well, and translate it into action for programme improvement and government-owned scale.

This role connects directly to Healthy Learners’ mission by ensuring that data from schools does not remain locked in systems or dashboards, but becomes practical insight that improves care, strengthens programme quality, supports evidence generation, and helps government partners make better decisions. The role will help centralize analytical complexity so that programme teams, frontline users, and government partners can act on clear interpretation rather than raw data.

The role will have limited direct interaction with children. Its primary work is with data, systems, staff, partners, and decision-makers. However, because the role influences how data about children is collected, interpreted, protected, and used, it must uphold Healthy Learners’ child safeguarding, data protection, consent, and responsible data-use standards. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. Program performance measurement strategy

• Build and steward Healthy Learners’ performance measurement architecture so the organization has a clear, trusted, and adaptive view of program delivery, quality, and progress against strategic goals.
• Ensure core indicators, reporting standards, and data quality expectations remain fit for purpose across internal management, donor accountability, government engagement, evidence generation, and cross-country scale.
• Lead collaboration across Programmes, Digital Health, Research, Innovation, Partnerships, Finance, and country teams to ensure measurement systems remain practical, responsive, and aligned to the decisions the organization needs to make.

1. Strategic analytics and evidence-to-action learning

• Build Healthy Learners’ strategic analytics capability so that routine data is translated into insight, learning, and program improvement.
• Strengthen the evidence-to-action loop so that data, analysis, research, and implementation learning routinely inform program decisions, adaptation, and strategic priorities.
• Establish analytical standards and routines that enable the organization to identify performance variation, quality signals, emerging risks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Advance a culture in which evidence is not treated as a reporting product, but as a practical input into better implementation, stronger program design, and more disciplined scale.
• Ensure Healthy Learners’ data and learning systems help the model improve as it scales, remaining simple, affordable, effective, and useful to government

1. Government systems integration

• Shape Healthy Learners’ Data as a Service agenda so that school health data becomes a useful decision-support asset for government partners.
• Strengthen the integration of Healthy Learners’ data products into government planning, supervision, public health intelligence, and system-strengthening processes.
• Ensure government-facing data products, reporting routines, and analytical narratives are credible, responsible, understandable, and aligned with government decision-making needs.
• Foster government ownership by ensuring data systems and insight products are designed for adaptation, institutional use, and long-term sustainability within public systems.

1. Public health intelligence and evidence translation

• Strengthen Healthy Learners’ ability to use school health data as a credible public health intelligence asset while ensuring surveillance-related outputs are responsibly defined, interpreted, and communicated.
• Build the interpretive bridge between Digital Health, Research, Programmes, and government partners so technical signals are translated into meaningful public health and program learning.
• Ensure public health intelligence strengthens Healthy Learners’ credibility as a government partner while remaining appropriately grounded in the evidence.

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience in monitoring and evaluation, epidemiology, statistics, economics, public health, data science, social science, or a related field.
• Significant experience leading measurement, analytics, strategic information, performance management, or data-use functions.
• Strong quantitative and interpretive analytical skills, including experience making sense of complex programme data.
• Experience developing performance measurement frameworks, indicators, reporting systems, and data quality standards.
• Demonstrated ability to translate data into clear insights and practical recommendations for decision-makers.
• Experience working across technical teams, programme teams, senior leaders, and external stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate with non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to manage teams, build systems, and lead cross-functional work.

Preferred

• Experience in public health, education, school health, community health, or government-partnered programmes.
• Experience with dashboards, business intelligence tools, Power BI, DHIS2, or similar systems.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled reporting, data governance, responsible data use, digital health systems, or surveillance analytics.
• Experience supporting government-facing data products or public-sector reporting.
• Experience with statistical or analytical tools such as R, Stata, Python, SQL, or similar.
• Experience with implementation research, RCTs, evaluation design, or evidence translation.
• Experience in multi-country or scaling organizations.

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.