Director, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)

Position: Director, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)

Reports To: AVP, Strategic Initiatives

Location: India, Nepal, Ghana, Ethiopia, or US

Position Type: Full-time

Location Requirement:

We are a global organization with a mix of remote, field-based, and in-office staff. This role is remote and can be based in India, Nepal, Ghana, Ethiopia or the United States. For U.S.-based candidates, at this time we will only consider candidates who reside in the following states where we are currently registered for employment:

California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE:

1. For more than 43 million people, blindness is a daily reality; another 295 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment. 90% of these people live in low- and middle-income countries where access to eye care is limited and the challenges for those who can’t see are severe. But there is hope: 80% of this burden is treatable or preventable. For example, 17 million blind people could be cured with a 10-minute cataract surgery. Millions more suffer from corneal blindness, which is often preventable or treatable. At the Cure Blindness Project, we believe avoidable blindness can – and must – be overcome. For more than 30 years, we have worked alongside a capable network of collaborators to help people around the world retain and regain their sight by developing high-quality, cost-effective eye care systems in underserved areas of the world. With the help of partners in more than 30 countries, Cure Blindness Project has provided more than 1.6 million sight-restoring surgeries and screened more than 5 million people to provide care and basic treatments. We’ve trained more than 20,100 eye health professionals and have established 5 eye hospitals. There is more work left to do, but we can overcome the mountain of global blindness together. Cure Blindness Project is expanding its team to meet new challenges, scale its work, and broaden its reach. We are seeking individuals who are passionate about changing lives and want to be a part of a team that works together to reach new heights. We want leaders who can aim high, make things happen, and are invested in building a positive team dynamic to bring the work to life.

VISION: A world where no one is needlessly blind

MISSION: We enable countries to cure avoidable blindness by developing high quality, cost-effective eye care in underserved areas of the world.

SCOPE OF WORK:

The Global MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning) Director will lead the design, implementation, and management of Cure Blindness Project MEL systems, focusing on data-driven impact measurement, learning, and adaptation for programs in diverse regions. Key responsibilities include developing MEL frameworks, overseeing data collection/analysis, ensuring data quality, building partner capacity, driving stakeholder engagement, and reporting on outcomes to donors and leadership to inform strategy and demonstrate effectiveness.

Reporting to the AVP of Strategic Initiatives, the Global MEL Director will lead the overall learning agenda of Cure Blindness Project’s programmatic efforts, working closely with country staff, partners and other internal and external stakeholders. The MEL Director will be responsible for overseeing the rollout of Salesforce by ensuring all dashboards are capturing the necessary data to make informed programmatic decisions.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

Strategy & Leadership:

• Set Global MEL Strategy and communicate this strategy on a regular basis to both internal and external stakeholders while overseeing the implementation in conjunction with global and regional program teams. Serve as budget lead for MEL program.
• Provide technical leadership and strategic direction for all MEL activities, in alignment with the organizations' strategic plan and funder requirements.
• Lead efforts to demonstrate impact beyond outputs by measuring outcomes and attributing change to Cure Blindness Project's interventions, strengthening donor accountability, board reporting, and organizational credibility.
• Serve as steward of the organization's theory of change, ensuring programs are designed with clear causal logic and that this logic is regularly tested and refined based on evidence.
• Collaborate with marketing department to strategically amplify key learning or results to bolster Cure Blindness Project’s position as a thought leader
• Spearhead Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) processes to integrate evidence into program design and improve effectiveness.
• Stay abreast of current research and literature in the eye health sector relevant and share updates with the team on a regular basis through coffee chats, internal forums, etc.

System Development:

• Champion evidence-based decision making by building systems that generate timely, actionable insights for leadership and program teams, ensuring organizational decisions—from program design to resource allocation—are grounded in data.
• Design and implement robust MEL systems, including indicators, data collection tools, and platforms (e.g. Power BI) for global rollout.
• Develop a strategy & plan to bring all program metrics housed externally to a centralized location.
• Oversee data collection, quality assurance (DQA), analysis, interpretation, and reporting for internal and external stakeholders.
• Lead the development of MEL sections for work plans, quarterly/annual reports, and presentations for donors and leadership.
• Continuously review and refine Cure Blindness Project’s monitoring systems, ensuring accessibility of up-to-date output statistics for 60 partners across 20 country programs
• Lead development of key evaluative indicators and analysis of related data to inform programmatic improvements (i.e. outcomes and efficiencies)
• Collaborate on research initiatives along with global clinical consultants and staff to build research capacity among partners, through mentorship, research project management, analysis, and publication of study results

Knowledge and Learning (K&L)

• Manage CQI reports and learning sessions, functioning as an organizational “knowledge broker”
• Design and lead evaluation activities of CBP’s Programs (i.e. primary, outreach, tertiary, advocacy, quality and research) including creating tools to collect data from partners, developing frameworks to store and analyze data, developing schedules/SOPs/protocols for data collection
• Design and lead evaluation activities for Country teams that monitor all program metrics, taking a comprehensive view of all program activities
• Support project proposal writing with respect to logic frameworks, indicators and evaluation plans and serve as subject matter expert/technical advisor for development teams for all MEL components of grant proposals
• Plan, establish, and facilitate a wide range of organizational knowledge management processes (special studies, after action reviews, Partners meetings, organizational learning surveys, on-line engagements, documenting lessons learned)
• Assist in reviewing performance against strategic plans, provide recommendations for updates
• Lead the systematic dissemination of evidence and results, both internally and externally, including in publications and conference presentations
• Train field teams, partners, and sub-awardees on MEL best practices, data use, and reporting.
• Collaborate with IT, program teams, leadership, and external partners (governments, other NGOs) to gather requirements and share findings.

Team Management

Lead relationships with internal and external stakeholders to drive data collection and develop a global MEL team.

• Directly manage and mentor team of 2 MEL staff
• Facilitate bi-weekly tactical calls to review the status of individual and MEL team work plans
• Utilize project management tools to manage MEL activities such as training staff and partners in MEL tools
• “Dotted Line” management of in-country MEL staff to ensure quality field support to partners

Other Responsibilities

• All employees are expected to work as a team and to contribute to any activity that will promote the success of the organization

QUALIFICATIONS:

Seeking a seasoned professional with a proven track record of leadership with MEL frameworks and systems and excellent analytical skills, as demonstrated by the following:

• BA/BS in relevant discipline i.e. public policy, public health, international development, economics (Master's Degree or relevant experience preferred)
• Minimum of 10+ years of increasing leadership and management in a monitoring, evaluation, and/or research role within an NGO or international organization
• Minimum of 5+ years managing and supervising others
• Experience with M&E of vision care or healthcare programs is preferred
• Effective collaborator, with extensive experience working across cultures and time zones
• Strong understanding of how to develop and implement robust M&E frameworks
• Proven track record of coaching and managing a team to develop their full potential and deliver outstanding results in an inclusive, positive manner
• Previous expertise in gender and social inclusion a plus
• Experience designing and implementing MEL systems for donor-funded projects
• Experience with Salesforce or similar platform
• Outstanding problem-solving skills to address challenges and obstacles as they arise
• Excellent quantitative and qualitative research, analysis and evaluation skills
• Proven track record of leading projects on time, with clear results, and within budget
• Ability to work effectively and diplomatically with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders including partners, cross functional teams, and senior level subject matter experts
• Strong interpersonal, communication, facilitation, and presentation skills
• Excellent oral and written English skills required
• Ability to travel internationally as needed (up to ~20%)

Physical requirements: 

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer

Cure Blindness Project encourages applications from people of all races, religions, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and ages, as well as veterans and individuals with disabilities.