Title: Deputy Director, Advocacy

Department: Policy, Advocacy and Programmes

Team: Advocacy

Reports to: Director of Policy, Advocacy and Programmes

Direct Reports: 3

Indirect Reports: 1

Dotted line reports: 3

Grade: F

Budget Holder (yes /no): Yes

Policy, Advocacy and Programmes department is a key delivery partner in ActionAid’s UK new strategy to promote a world where women and girls are valued and live free from violence, can exercise their rights to promote their own economic empowerment, safety, equality and voice. The department is comprised of team members supporting financial resource mobilisation, grant/ contract management, programming policy, research and learning towards this end. The Advocacy team develops relationships of influence to advance ActionAid UK’s research, programme policy learning, campaigns and resource mobilisation needs to ActionAid UK’s target political/institutional influencers, academic audiences and donors. The Deputy Director will act as a senior level lobbyist, media and public spokesperson for cross-cutting issues and for women’s rights, in order to advance advocacy on priority issues to improve international development/humanitarian policy and practice. They will maintain strategic oversight of AAUK’s policy and political advocacy work on cross-cutting development issues and specific campaign priorities to ensure the coherence of our public positions on these issues.

Strategic leadership

• Act as a senior leader in the international development/ humanitarian arena in the field of women and girls rights regularly communicating the needs and priorities of ActionAid International country programs to donors and participating in high level policy and practice forums- staying ahead of relevant global policy and practice decisions
• Support the development and implementation of an aligned policy, advocacy and programme resource mobilisation strategy for the department on women and girls rights
• Lead organisation political risk management- appraising senior leadership and, on request, AAUK board on new developments and recommended action.
• Act as the most senior leader of a talented group of advocates - bringing vision, cohesion and authentic intellectual dialogue together to create a strong culture of performance and collaboration.

Relationships and engagement

• Develop and expand relations with decision-makers and their influencers, and build and maintain ActionAid’s profile with key UK political, private sector and opinion-former audiences for the purposes of advancing our advocacy and campaigning priorities.
• Provide regular briefings to the Executive Director, the Director of Policy, Advocacy & Programmes and the Senior Leadership Team, and provide support and advice to the Executive Director in his lobbying role

Developing and promoting advocacy strategy and policy in the UK and Overseas

• Lead the development of political and institutional engagement strategies to service campaigning and advocacy priorities of AAUK and/or AAI and lead/coordinate the implementation of these engagement strategies.
• Ensure AAUK public policy messages and advocacy materials are coherent, of a high quality, build on targets’ concerns and consistently promote women’s rights issues and perspectives.

Political Profile building

• Work with the Digital Media and Campaigns team to develop ActionAid’s media positioning and ensure that our public statements are credible, relevant to the political debate, and supportive of our approach to influencing.

External Representation

• Act on behalf of Director during periods where the Director is traveling or on leave.
• As agreed with the Director, the Deputy Director will use their technical competency in women and girls rights to represent ActionAid UK to donors, academics and policy makers to align resource mobilisation with strategies and to influence and engage intellectual discussion.
• Ensure AAUK contributes to ActionAid International’s influencing strategy and its implementation, and that AAUK’s influencing of international actors such as the EU, G8, G20 and UN is strategic and co-ordinated with AAI.

Human Resource management

• Maintain open and professional relations with team members, promoting a strong team spirit and providing oversight and guidance to enable staff to successfully perform in their positions.
• Continually seek out ways to build the capacities of the program team members, individually and collectively.
• Ensure that detailed, realistic and feasible project implementation plans are developed, and modified as needed

Internal: Humanitarian Policy and Practice unit, Advocacy unit, Philanthropy and Partnerships Team, AAUK Programme Forum, Public Engagement and Communications Department, Fundraising department, Organisational Effectiveness, AAUK Leadership Group, AAI Federation.

External: Politicians, Institutional donors, Academic institutions, Policy stakeholders and NGO networks.

Essential:

• Strong political judgement and experience of high level policy influencing/lobbing work
• Detailed knowledge of decision-making processes and influencing opportunities in the*UK government, and at least one of the international bodies of which it is a member.
• Extensive knowledge and experience of policy and advocacy work on women’s rights issues.
• Extensive experience of networking and contact building in Whitehall, Westminster, political think-tanks
• Experience of working to influence company behaviour on national/ international issues
• Experience of management of staff, budgets and projects.
• Extensive experience of media-based advocacy and of being a media spokesperson in both broadcast and print media.
• Experience of designing and steering political influencing work at a strategic level.
• Strong presentational skills, especially the ability to digest large amounts of information, and present complex issues clearly and concisely to a variety of specialist and non- specialist audiences.
• Excellent negotiation and communication skills, including demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with colleagues in teams.
• Proven initiative, flexibility and enthusiasm in responding to changing priorities and tight deadlines.
• Social media skills and experience (esp., blogging, tweeting)
• Excellent writing skills.
• Willing and able to travel.

Desirable:

• Experience of living and working in a developing country.
• Knowledge of one other language other an English.

This role profile sets out the current duties of the post that may vary from time to time without changing the character of the job or the level of responsibility entailed. However, all role profiles are regularly reviewed and updated accordingly in line with organisational needs.