Manager, Policy

Grand Challenges Canada; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Grand Challenges Canada is seeking a Policy Manager to advance our AI for development strategy within a cross-functional PLR team. This hybrid Toronto-based role focuses on policy leadership, convening peers, and shaping how GCC translates learning into funding innovation.

You will drive thought leadership, manage policy signals tracking, and mentor a growing team across the policy, learning, and reporting portfolio.

Qualifications

• 5–8 years of policy experience
• At least 3 years of team leadership
• Ability to build coalitions and drive change
• Excellent written communication for senior audiences
• Strong verbal communication and interpersonal skills
• Comfort operating in a matrixed organization
• Passion for GCC's mission and impact
• Advanced degree in a relevant field

Responsibilities

• Policy analysis and learning in AI for development and financing for development.
• Strategic engagement with policy counterparts and innovators.
• Convene peers and partners to improve funding for innovation.
• Contribute to Learning Agenda and policy positioning.
• Track policy signals and translate into action.
• Support design and production of knowledge products.
• Provide leadership and mentorship to the team.

Skills

Policy analysis

Strategic engagement

Convene for impact

Thought leadership

Policy signals

Knowledge products

Team leadership

Education

Advanced degree in a relevant field

Job description

Site: Hybrid: MaRS Discovery Tower (Toronto) + Work from Home

Reports to: Senior Director, Policy and Strategy

Status: Permanent, Full Time

Are you our next Policy Manager?

Grand Challenges Canada is looking for a new member of the inaugural Policy, Learning, and Reporting Team. This role is a high impact, high energy, cross-functional role that will advance GCC’s ambitious policy agenda. It requires working across a matrixed organization to implement our new Strategy, Policy Framework, and Learning Agenda, with an emphasis on strategic positioning on AI for innovation, economic impact, and innovative finance.

What you'll do

• Policy analysis and learning. Develop policy analytical products relevant to AI for development, economic development, and financing for development.
• Strategic engagement. Build and steward relationships with policy counterparts at peer innovation funders, and with innovators navigating policy and regulatory barriers.
• Convene for impact. Bring together peers and partners to ensure we are using what we learn to improve the way we fund innovation as a community.
• Thought leadership. Contribute to our new Learning Agenda that reinforces GCC's aspirations in the AI and innovative finance space.
• Policy signals. Help build out a new line of work tracking policy signals — early indicators of shifts in the foreign assistance landscape — and translate these into action.
• Knowledge products. Support the design and production of products that draw on GCC's ??? as the largest funder of health innovation with a creative capital stack aimed at peer funders, partner governments, and the innovation community.
• Team leadership. Provide leadership and mentorship to an evolving team — including, but extending beyond, direct reports — fostering a culture of kindness, collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning.

About us

Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) is dedicated to the vision of a world where innovation helps every person thrive. Our role in this vision is to support local, scalable, sustainable innovation that builds a healthier, more equitable future. We are committed to our core values of seeking impact, promoting equity, and being good partners, as well as to being accountable and caring for our work and each other.

As one of the largest impact-first funders in Canada, GCC has funded over 1,6000 innovations championed by innovators in more than 100 countries. These innovations have already reached more than 100 million people, and our 2025-2030 strategy commits us to reaching 700 million people with lifesaving and life-improving innovation.

Delivering on that strategy requires convening and influencing partners at scale. We intend to become a global partner and first port-of-call for deep knowledge and the delivery of impact through innovation. Our strategic ‘connect’ pillar seeks to initiate thought leadership to bring partners into the wider innovation ecosystem.

Under the leadership of the Chief Strategy and Partnerships Officer (CSPO), the strategy unit is an evolving, agile team, dedicated to accelerating GCC’s pathway to 750 million lives reached, through the levers of high-impact partnerships, policy influence, and strategic communications. The Policy, Learning, and Reporting (PLR) team is a new function within the CSPO unit dedicated to keeping GCC insight-driven and adaptive — translating learning from our portfolio, operations, and the wider innovation ecosystem into both internal strategy and external influence. PLR works closely with the partnerships and communications teams.

The Manager, Policy will support the Senior Director, Policy in delivering the 2026 GCC Policy Framework, with particular focus on thought leadership, convening, and strategic positioning. The role suits someone who is comfortable making meaning of a fast-changing foreign assistance landscape and turning insight into action for GCC and its partners. The Manager will play a critical role in initiating and maintaining relationships with other innovation funders’ policy teams as well as with innovators thinking through policy and regulatory barriers at the local level.

About you

• Proactive team member who can see opportunity to lead internally and externally.
• Basic knowledge and awareness of the emergent AI for development/innovation space and innovative finance approaches.
• A kind colleague who is ready to take initiative and lead change.
• 5–8 years of relevant experience in policy, ideally including work touching Canadian foreign assistance or broader bilateral and multilateral aid architecture.
• At least 3 years of team leadership and people management experience.
• Demonstrated ability to build coalitions that drive meaningful change.
• Excellent written communication, with the ability to synthesize complex information into clear, compelling products for senior audiences.
• Strong verbal communication and interpersonal skills, with confidence presenting and representing GCC externally.
• Comfort operating in a matrixed organization where influence depends on relationships rather than authority.
• Passion for GCC's mission and the impact we seek in the world.
• An advanced degree in a relevant field.

People from historically excluded communities with lived experiences in relevant thematic areas are encouraged to apply. People with lived experience and/or work experience in the communities or countries we are supporting are especially encouraged to apply.

Don’t meet every requirement? Studies have shown that women, people of colour, people from LGBTQ2S+ and disabilities communities are less likely to apply to jobs when they do not meet every qualification. At Grand Challenges Canada, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, authentic, and accountable workplace, so if you are excited about this role but your experience does not align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply, as you may be the ideal candidate we are looking for.

Location and Work Requirements

• We are currently working in a hybrid model. GCC staff are to live in or near the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and available to travel to, and work from the Toronto main office, as business operational needs require; some domestic and international travel required.
• Applicants must be eligible to work in Canada.
• Health and Dental provided by Sunlife Canada effective on start date.
• Enrollment in the Healthcare of Ontario (HOOPP) Defined-Benefit Pension Plan.
• Four (4) weeks of paid vacation per calendar year (prorated).
• Four (4) day work week (with Friday as a flex/off day), excluding weeks with Statutory holiday (program reviewed annually).