Director, Sustainable Coffee Markets

~ Without thriving ecosystems, we cannot guarantee a stable climate, accessible fresh water and sufficient food, limited threats to human health, rich cultural diversity and the innumerable unknown benefits that nature provides. In short, people need nature to thrive. ~

Conservation International (CI) focuses on these key areas of human needs because they illustrate the deep links between humanity and nature, maximize the impact of CI's experience and expertise, and demonstrate the importance of taking a coordinated local, regional and global approach.

• Climate
• Freash Water
• Food
• Health
• Cultural Services
• Biodiversity 

CI seeks to address all of these efforts simultaneously and transform our greatest challenges into the greatest opportunity of our time.

Position Overview

The primary function of this position is to manage CI's global initiative in the coffee sector, with a particular emphasis on implementing strategies and programs to achieve CI's long-term goal of transforming 100% of US and European markets to sustainable coffee sourcing. This position will sit within CELB's Strategic Initiatives program and will report to the Senior Strategic Advisor, CELB.

Primary duties include:

Implementing CI strategy for the coffee sector

• The Director will oversee implementation of CI's corporate partnerships with the coffee sector.
• These partnerships will build upon CI core capacities in field implementation, science, and policy and market engagement and will focus on sustainable coffee production as a component of Healthy Sustainable Societies in coffee producing regions of the world.
• Implementation of these partnerships will require leadership and collaboration across CI divisions.
• The Director will be responsible for recruiting and building partnerships with companies and donors and managing these projects to ensure their successful implementation.

Building and managing alliances

• The Director will lead management of alliances that may include multiple companies, NGOs, donors, government agencies and other stakeholders in the coffee sector necessary to achieve CI amplification targets.

Responsibilities

Account Management

• Serve as Account Manager for key corporate and donor partnerships in the coffee sector that will advance CI's overall institutional coffee strategy.
• This role includes managing day to day communications with corporate partners, managing implementation of projects and delivery of key products to partners, serving as CI's internal expert on the company, and ensuring overall health of the CI-partner relationship.

Project Management and Implementation

• Project management responsibilities include development and management of project work plans, overseeing implementation by different CI divisions to deliver quality outputs on time and in budget, budget management, and reporting to donors.
• This role includes implementation of project activities that specifically relate to coffee market and supply chain strategies.
• Project management includes projects build around relationships with individual companies, as well as development and implementation of work plans associated with multi-stakeholder alliances.

Fundraising

• Support development of fundraising concepts and proposals to drive CI's coffee strategy working across divisions to draw from CI's full set of skills and capacities across the institution.
• Engage donors to successfully progress from initial donor engagement, to concept note, and proposal delivery. Fundraising efforts will likely also include external partners and organizations.

Communications and Outreach

• Represent CI at coffee industry events such as National Coffee Association or SCAA conferences and directly engage corporations, donors, and other organizations in the coffee sector as necessary to position CI as an authority in the area of coffee sustainability.
• Develop content for external communications that may take the form of presentations/speeches, web content, blogs, scientific papers, and proposals.
• Coordinate sharing of lessons learned and expertise across the institution so other divisions are aware of trends and opportunities in the coffee sector and institutional strategies and actions are coordinated to ensure CI achieves targets and goals for the coffee sector.
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor.

Working Conditions

• This position will work from the CI-Virginia office.
• It will require extensive travel to CI field offices, conferences, and partner facilities in the US and abroad.
• Estimated travel requirements would be 20-30% of time.

Qualifications 

Required

• 7- 10 years of senior level experience in the coffee sector related to business and environmental sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, and business strategy from a corporate, consulting, academic, public sector, or NGO environment. 
• Bachelor's degree in agriculture, business, international development, conservation or other related field.
• Sophisticated knowledge and understanding of coffee value chains, certification and other sustainable supply chain systems relevant to coffee.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex projects or initiatives that involve multiple internal and external stakeholders across private and public sectors and civil society organizations.
• Proven ability to engage and establish partnerships with corporations.
• Proven ability to develop concepts, develop them into proposals and secure funding.
• Proven ability to work effectively across cultures, establish and manage effective collaborations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Highly developed ability to synthesize and communicateinformation to businesses and other stakeholder groups.

Preferred

• Foreign language abilities with preference for Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese, Spanish or Mandarin.
• Established track record in research and writing on CSR topics in business or academic settings through published reports, articles or contributions to significant company consulting projects.
• Masters degree or higher.