Director, Global Program Advocacy and Communications, Health

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Paid time off

Paid family leave

Retirement contribution

Job summary

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seeks a Director, Global Program Advocacy and Communications (Global PAC), Health, to lead the Foundation’s global health advocacy strategy and partnerships. This role shapes policy, financing, and communications to advance Maternal & Child Survival, Health R&D, and Health Financing with cross-cutting stakeholder engagement.

The Director will align program strategy with regional teams, partners, and donors, driving impactful advocacy, risk management, and policy

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or equivalent in public policy, public health, or international development.
• 15+ years of senior-level experience in global health, policy advocacy and financing initiatives.
• Experience with governments in low- and middle-income countries and with multilateral agencies.
• Proven ability to mobilize resources across bilateral, multilateral, development bank and philanthropic funders.

Responsibilities

• Set and implement the Global PAC Health strategy and priorities.
• Lead Global PAC Health’s contribution to division priorities on Maternal & Child Survival, Health R&D, and Health Financing.
• Build and steward coalitions of partners, donors, and governments to advance health policy objectives.
• Oversee issue communications and narrative development to mobilize political will and resources.

Skills

Public policy

Advocacy

Global health

Resource mobilization

Policy analysis

Coalition building

Strategic leadership

Education

Master’s degree

Job description

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofitfighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve.We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities.As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation’s work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation’s objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation’s resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage diverse collaborators and promote innovative solutions that advance our program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs and Communications to build the environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives.

Global Program Advocacy & Communications (GPAC) is the Foundation’s global capability for issue advocacy and communications. GPAC engages where work is cross-market, technically complex, and requires global assets and specialized expertise. Working with our program, regional, and country teams, we help mobilize the financing, policy change, and public legitimacy required for impact. GPAC’s core functions include:

• Translating program priorities into advocacy strategies and asks: Applying deep issue knowledge and policy expertise to translate technical program goals into actionable policy and financing priorities.
• Developing and synthesizing evidence to influence decision-makers: Investing in and translating research, data, and technical evidence into investment cases, policy content, and market-ready materials.
• Building and mobilizing advocacy ecosystems: Convening and aligning partners, coalitions, and champions to advance policy change, influence agendas, mobilize resources, and strengthen accountability.
• Leading global issue communications: Developing evidence-based narratives and communications assets; supporting strategic media engagement and campaigns; and anticipating and managing communications and reputational risks.
• Providing specialized advocacy expertise: Offering strategic counsel on complex advocacy challenges to build enabling policy, regulatory, and communications environments.
• Facilitating cross-team collaboration and learning: Connecting program, policy, communications, regional, and country teams; sharing intelligence on emerging risks and opportunities; and translating learnings across geographies.

GPAC partners with Foundation colleagues and external stakeholders—including governments, multilateral institutions, civil society, philanthropy, the media, and others—to ensure that global strategies strengthen country-led advocacy and drive measurable progress.

Your Role

The global health sector is being redefined. Development assistance for health has decreased significantly since its peak in 2021, major health multilaterals had difficulty meeting replenishment targets, and bilateral donors are shifting their funding approaches. At the same time, governments in Africa and Asia are raising domestic health spending and asserting leadership through the Lusaka Agenda, the Accra Reset, Africa CDC, AUDA NEPAD, the African Medicines Agency, and India’s growing role as a source of vaccines, digital public infrastructure and AI for other countries. AI is moving from pilots into public health systems. The Foundation has committed to spend its resources by 2045 to help ensure no mother, child or baby dies of a preventable cause, the next generation grows up in a world without deadly infectious diseases, and hundreds of millions of people break free from poverty.

The Director, Global Program Advocacy and Communications (Global PAC), Health leads the Foundation’s global health advocacy through this transition. The Director provides strategic leadership for the team that turns the Foundation’s health priorities into political will, financing and policy change, and helps build a system of health financing and policy that countries own and that will last beyond any single donor, including the Foundation.

The Director leads Global PAC Health, including the Program Partner teams aligned to the Global Health, Global Development and Gender Equality divisions, and Health Communications. The team’s centralized capabilities drive global outcomes and create the narratives, global public goods, evidence, and specialized policy capacity that make market- and country-led advocacy more effective. This includes building investment cases with program and finance and resource mobilization teams, building partner coalitions, crafting issue narratives and spotting risks, and strengthening the policy and regulatory environments needed to advance our health financing and policy goals. The team’s work supports the Foundation’s goals and the GPA division priorities that advance them: Maternal & Child Survival, Health Research and Development (R&D), Innovation Introduction, and Health Financing.

The Director works across the Foundation with the program strategy teams (PSTs) and division leadership teams, and across GPA with the market-led teams in Europe, Middle East and East Asia (EMEEA), North America (NAT), Africa, India and South/Southeast Asia, the Development Policy and Finance (DPAF) team, and the philanthropic partnership team (PPT), so that Foundation priorities reach decision-makers through strategic, coordinated advocacy. The Director leads the team that serves as GPA’s front door to the PSTs and division leadership and aligns GPA’s advocacy capabilities behind the Foundation’s highest-impact priorities.

Global and country teams each hold something the other needs. Seattle sits close to PSTs, government relations teams in donor capital are close to financing decisions, and regional and country teams hold the context, and the relationship with governments in our delivery geographies The Director makes the partnership model between global and regional/country teams work: co-designing strategy with Africa and India colleagues from the outset, sharing intelligence in both directions, advocating inside the Foundation for country priorities with PSTs and division leaders, and leading GPAC Health on the connections and priorities a global team is best placed to do.

The ideal leader understands and translates complex PST strategies and brings the best of GPA to them: its relationships, intelligence, financing expertise and communications capability. They have deep advocacy experience, strong knowledge of financing sources across bilateral, multilateral and philanthropic funders and the ability to work with the Resource Mobilization (RM) Hub and other GPA teams to maximize resource mobilization. They understand how health systems are financed and run, how ministries of finance and health make budget decisions, and how to effect policy change at global, regional and national levels. They have earned credibility with leaders in governments and institutions across the Global South. They are both a practitioner and an orchestrator: credible enough to speak in specifics on advocacy tactics, strategy and partners, and skilled at keeping many complex, interdependent efforts moving at once. They are decisive, with the credibility to define clearly what is and is not achievable and to bring colleagues with them. This role suits a leader who has worked in multiple parts of global health, in or with government, in multilateral, academic or research institutions, in civil society, or in industry.

This role partners with the Director, Global PAC Global Growth and Opportunity (GGO) to co-lead the overall Global PAC team and reports to the President, GPA.

What You’ll Do

Strategy and leadership

• Set and implement the Global PAC Health strategy. Define where Global PAC Health engages focusing on cross-market, technically complex or politically sensitive work and on reusable global assets that regional and country teams draw on. Own the quality of the strategy and the delivery of its outcomes.
• Lead through the GPA division priorities. Own Global PAC Health’s contribution to the division priorities on Maternal & Child Survival, Health R&D, Innovation Introduction and Health Financing, turning each priority into an integrated plan that links advocacy, financing, policy and communications. Work with the relevant PSTs, regional and country advocacy teams, and GPA colleagues to set one clear strategy and ask for each priority, align the partners, coalitions and donors needed to deliver it, and use key global moments to build political commitment and mobilize resources. Hold the team accountable for measurable progress, and make sure global efforts reinforce the work of country and regional teams.
• Be a strategic partner to PSTs and serve as a bridge to GPA teams. Develop a deep understanding of each PST’s strategy and lead the Program Partner leaders who represent GPA on PST and division leadership teams. Bring the best of GPA to program teams in a coordinated way, translating technical priorities into clear policy and financing asks, meeting each team where it is while holding the line on what advocacy can and cannot achieve. Bring regional and country perspectives into PST strategy early, before asks are set. Bring hands-on advocacy expertise to sharpen the team’s engagement and strengthen the credibility of GPA’s counsel.

Partnership with regional and country teams

• Build one strategy with Africa and India. Co-design advocacy strategies, asks, and plans with the Africa Policy, Government Relations and Partnerships (PGRP) and India PAC teams from the start. Clarify roles between GPAC, regional and country teams in Africa and India, and government relationships teams in donor markets. Share intelligence in both directions and hold joint accountability for results.
• Carry country evidence and leadership into global decisions. Provide space in global platforms for analysis and champions from the regional/country efforts, including through replenishments and global moments such as the G20, the UN General Assembly and the World Health Assembly.
• Broker South-South exchange. Work with the India and Africa teams to spread proven approaches across countries, including, AI tools, regulatory reform, local manufacturing when economically viable, and to support the growing role of India and African countries as suppliers of health innovation to other low- and middle-income countries.

Financing, architecture and ecosystems

• Drive policy and financing alignment for health PST priorities. Define the policy and financing asks for PST issues and lead PAC’s contribution to replenishments, pledging moments and deal teams, coordinating advocacy, strengthening positioning and aligning partners and communications. Work within the GPA Resource Mobilization (RM) Hub model: partner with the GPA teams who lead funder relationships, opportunity development and deal brokerage, and with the RM Hub on shared visibility of financing needs and sources, deal ownership and escalation.
• Advocate for financing countries own health systems. With DPAF, the RM Hub and regional teams, support the shift from aid dependence toward domestic resource mobilization, stronger budget execution, and blended and innovative finance. Engage multilateral development banks and newer sources of finance, including Gulf and Asian governments and domestic and diaspora philanthropy.
• Help shape the reform of global health architecture. Help the Foundation take clear, constructive positions as global health initiatives, UN agencies and donors reorganize, consistent with the Lusaka Agenda and country-led platforms. Promote one national plan, one budget and one accountability framework in each country. Engage bilateral donors as they move to compact-based models so new agreements reinforce national systems.
• Shape the global health advocacy ecosystem and build coalitions. Steward a focused portfolio of health advocacy partners, guide PAC’s engagement with disease-specific institutions and communities, and maintain accountability for results. Convene multilateral institutions, civil society and philanthropic partners around shared goals, and build the investment cases, convenings and cross-market learning that make country and regional advocacy more effective.
• Lead advocacy and partnerships on AI for health. With PSTs, the Africa and India teams and GPA colleagues, advance the policy, financing and governance needed to move proven AI tools from pilots into government-owned health systems: lower costs and clear procurement pathways, the data and compute foundations low- and middle-income countries need, and standards for safety, equity and evidence. Use AI to make GPAC’s own advocacy and communications faster and better informed.

Issue communications

• Lead issue communications. Oversee Health Communications, developing evidence-based narratives and communication assets, supporting strategic media engagement and campaigns, and in partnership with the Communications division and regional teams, manage communications and reputational risks associated with the issue portfolio.
• Make the case for health as an investment in growth. With the GGO team, show how health, nutrition and human capital drive productivity, jobs and economic growth, in terms finance ministers and investors use.

Co-leading Global PAC

• Partner with the Director, Global PAC GGO to set shared direction, operating model and standards for Global PAC, align budget and portfolio decisions, and co-lead portfolio and strategy reviews.
• Drive innovation and learning in advocacy. Pilot new advocacy approaches, narratives and engagement models, measure results, including value for money and the defense of past gains, document what works and what does not, and share learning across PAC and GPA to build PAC as a center of excellence.

People leadership

• Lead and develop the team. Set a clear vision and a high bar for performance. Lead, coach and grow leaders and individual contributors across time zones and geographies. Hire and onboard talent, set clear expectations, give and seek feedback, support development, and hold people accountable. Build an inclusive, energized team culture and lead people with care and clarity through organizational change.

Your Experience

• A master’s degree or equivalent demonstrated experience, preferably in public policy, public health, health economics, international relations or international development.
• 15+ years of progressive, senior-level experience leading and developing senior teams and leading policy, advocacy and financing initiatives in global health and global development, or equivalent, preferably across government, multilateral, academic, non-profit and private sectors.
• Experience working in or with governments in low- and middle-income countries, ideally in Africa or South Asia, and with multilateral agencies, development banks and global health institutions.
• Professional or lived experience of health systems in low- and middle-income countries, and credibility with leaders of governments and institutions in the Global South.
• Deep knowledge of health financing and health systems: how budgets are set, released and spent, how domestic resource mobilization works, and how global health initiatives finance and deliver programs.
• Demonstrated record of mobilizing resources across bilateral, multilateral, development bank and philanthropic funders, ideally in global health.
• Mastery-level expertise in advocacy and influencing related to resource mobilization, policy analysis, communications, coalition building, and partnership development with diverse constituencies, including the private sector, policymakers, civil society, academia, multilateral agencies and development banks. Campaign or strategic communications experience is an asset.
• Proven ability to turn data, economic analysis and implementation evidence into investment cases and policy proposals decision-makers act on.
• Hands-on advocacy credibility: able to speak in specifics on advocacy tactics, strategy and partners, and to steer multiple complex, interdependent workstreams at once while keeping command of the detail.
• Strategy development and execution, including impact measurement, portfolio management and prioritization in a changing resource environment.
• Working knowledge of digital public infrastructure, data and AI, and the policy, financing and governance questions they raise for health systems.