Audacious Project Director

This position may work remotely from any of the following countries: Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia.

Ipas is the only global organization laser-focused on preventing unsafe abortion, with more than 50 years of experience strengthening pathways to safe abortion and contraceptive care. In 2025, Ipas became the first ever abortion rights organization to secure a grant from the Audacious funding initiative. By 2032, we aim to prevent 16.3 million unsafe abortions, 22.6 million unintended pregnancies and 39,000 maternal deaths, focusing efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. By scaling our work across 10 of the highest-need countries, we will reduce annual unsafe abortions by approximately 30%, giving millions of girls and women the chance to determine their own future. By 2040, we expect improved abortion ecosystems across all project countries and, despite existing barriers, significant advancement in laws and policies, social and cultural norms, as well as access to quality care. Through this work, Ipas will accelerate progress that would otherwise take decades — building sustainable, country-owned systems that will achieve impact well beyond this seven-year, multi-million-dollar investment.

The Audacious Project Director is a senior leadership role within Ipas’s Program Support Team (PST), accountable for strategic stewardship, governance and adaptive results-based management of the Audacious investment across implementation regions and countries. In essence, while this role manages the Audacious project, it will also help leverage this investment to strengthen Ipas’s broader strategic plan.

The Audacious Project Director will serve as a key integrator and steward of Ipas’s Audacious strategy, ensuring alignment across country strategies, budgets, logic models, results frameworks and funding scenarios while enabling locally-led decision-making and learning. The Audacious Project Director is responsible for designing and maintaining project governance structures, results-based management systems, risk and compliance frameworks, and evidence and learning architectures that support collective, sustainable impact at scale.
Working closely with country leadership, global functional teams (Programs, TEX, MERLA, Finance, Legal/Compliance, Business Development), and major donors (including Audacious donors and beyond), the Audacious Project Director ensures that Ipas can credibly demonstrate progress against ambitious ecosystem level outcomes, adapt strategy based on evidence, and steward one of Ipas’s most significant strategic investments.

Primary Responsibilities

Strategic and Project Results Leadership

• Provide project leadership for the Audacious investment, ensuring the strategic and organization-wide value to Ipas is maximized.
• Design, implement, and maintain Audacious governance structures, including project charters, decision‑rights, escalation pathways, and shared‑leadership practices that balance global stewardship with strong country ownership.
• Maintain a clear focus on driving Audacious project delivery and results, as a major contributor to organizational performance against the Ipas strategic plan.
• Establish and steward Audacious project management systems; working closely with Ipas teams to adapt and apply efficient and effective processes and documentation for delivery, monitoring, reporting, compliance and risk management.
• Work closely with the Business Development team to leverage the Audacious investment to secure additional funding.
• Strong collaboration with CSTO, TEX and MERLA teams to maintain alignment and leverage cross-learning for the network strategy and technical priorities.
• Lead and guide iterative redesign of projections, budgets, and implementation strategies as operational landscape, funding levels and donor requirements evolve.
• Build and positively manage excellent relationships across the Ipas Network and external sector.

Project Management, Risk Management and Safeguarding

• In consultation with the implementing countries, develop technically sound and operationally robust project workplan, develop scenario planning and trade-offs for the project.
• Ensure coherence across country strategies, workplans, budgets, logic models, results frameworks, and multiple funding scenarios in line with Ipas’s strategic plan.
• Ensure each implementing country develops and maintains a contextualized Audacious logic model articulating intervention choices across all impact levers.
• Drive dynamic, results‑based management, integrating programmatic, financial, and evidence data to inform strategic decision‑making and adaptive course correction over time.
• Anticipate, mitigate and manage programmatic, financial, legal, political, and reputational risks and issues across country programs.
• Ensure timely access to high-quality progress, performance and compliance information for internal stakeholders across the organization, to support decision-making and accountability.
• Oversee preparation of donor-facing narrative and financial reports, and compliance documentation; ensuring accuracy and consistency.
• Ensure on time and quality assured completion of donor-specific deliverables tied to disbursement schedules.
• Champion safeguarding and ethical programming standards, including protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), and ensure consistent application across partners and implementing teams.

Financial Stewardship, Systems Integration & Value for Money

• Provide project-level financial stewardship, including multi‑year budget alignment, variance analysis, to support resource reallocation decisions linked to results.
• Oversee results‑based financial analysis, cost‑per‑outcome tracking, and value‑for‑money reporting.
• Ensure timely access to high-quality performance and compliance data for internal stakeholders to support decision-making, and mutual accountability.
• Support MERLA team in ensuring Audacious reporting credibly demonstrates efficiency, cost‑effectiveness, and strategic use of resources across service delivery, policy engagement, and movement‑building investments.

Evidence, Learning & Results Architecture

• Responsible for strong internal communication and knowledge management across the Audacious lifecycle.
• In partnership with Program Evidence (PE) team, ensure alignment of the Audacious Results Framework with long-term project outcomes and the organizational strategy, including abortion care quality measures, stigma measurement, CSO/CBO capacity assessments, feminist approaches and ecosystem evaluations.
• Collaborate with the TEX team to operationalize the results framework and achieve intended deliverables, including the learning agenda and systems-level evaluation plans
• Sponsor cross‑country and organization-wide functional learning agendas to test assumptions, surface evidence, replicate promising practices, and inform strategic adaptation.
• Contribute to the development of learning and communication materials.

Donor and External Relations

• Collaborate with the country and global (especially Development and Communications) teams to support fundraising and communication strategies related to the Audacious project.
• Build and steward relationships, leveraging and centering country leadership and expertise from across the network.
• Represent Ipas externally on Audacious‑related forums, as needed.
• Other duties as assigned.

Working Environment 

• This position is fully remote, subject to change based on business need.  
• Flexibility to meet virtually in different time zones required.
• Ability to travel internationally up to 30%

Minimum Requirements 

• Deep commitment to sexual and reproductive health and rights especially safe abortion and access to contraception, feminist leadership principles and understanding of principles, policies and best practices related to related intersectionality.
• Strong record of leading through shared power and influence without authority, particularly with senior country or regional leaders within Ipas.
• Demonstrated successes leading large‑scale, complex, adaptive projects spanning service delivery, policy change, civil society strengthening, and systems reform.
• Proven experience engaging major philanthropic or bilateral donors in high‑trust, iterative relationships, including negotiations, scenario planning, and refined results reporting. 
• Demonstrated experience implementing results-based management and managing through complexity.
• A master’s degree in public administration, international affairs, public health or a relevant field or a Bachelor’s degree with extensive experience in program, compliance, or grants management.
• 12-15 years of progressive professional experience in the international nonprofit sector, with proven expertise in grant making, grants management, program management, compliance, and legal frameworks, social justice organizations and movements, preferably in Asia and/or Africa.
• Fluency in English required. (Proficiency in French and/or Spanish preferred).

Competencies

• Organizational‑level strategic thinking and results stewardship.
• Decisive, values‑grounded risk management.
• Feminist leadership and shared power practice.
• Complex stakeholder and donor relationship management.
• Systems integration, learning, and adaptive leadership.
• Clear, credible communication in high‑ambiguity environments.

Ipas is strongly committed to providing a work environment that is free from all forms of harassment, discrimination, and inequity.  We recruit, employ, train, promote, and compensate our personnel without regard to race, age, sex, religion, national origin, color, creed, ancestry, citizenship, caste, ethnicity, regional identity, tribal identity, marital status, veteran status, disability, genetic information, gender identity, transgender status, sexual orientation, or any other personal characteristic protected by law or outlined by Ipas policy. Ipas acknowledges that these personal characteristics may differ in different contexts.