Educate! works to transform education in Africa to teach youth to solve poverty for themselves and their communities.
This role provides strategic financial leadership to ensure the organization maintains a strong, sustainable financial position, builds efficient systems, and drives data-driven strategic decisions necessary for scaling its mission. The CFO will be a key leader in overseeing financial operations, reporting, systems architecture, compliance, and technology integration within the finance and administration functions.
Key Responsibilities
Financial Oversight (20%)
- Provide strategic leadership over financial operations and restrictions management to ensure a strong, sustainable cash position across all countries.
- Oversee accurate, timely financial reporting and maintain internal controls that keep the organization fully audit-ready at all times.
- Champion a culture of cost consciousness and financial discipline, ensuring teams use resources efficiently and responsibly.
- Ensure financial information is consistently reliable, on time, and actionable for leaders and stakeholders to make sound, data-driven decisions.
- Drive swift and effective resolution of all audit recommendations, ensuring financial integrity and compliance remain a non-issue and never disrupt organizational success.
Systems Building (20%)
- Design and build lean financial systems and processes that are specifically tailored to match the product stage and business model of each program model.
- Collaborate with program leaders to review and develop country-level finance systems that support optimum field delivery operations while establishing and promoting an appropriate control environment.
- Ensure teams in the field can deliver with excellence, supported by robust financial practices.
- Develop financial systems that empower product and implementation teams to focus on what matters most at each stage: speed, quality, or scale by eliminating unnecessary procedures and enabling operational clarity.
- Create systems that evolve with the organization’s growth, ensuring efficiency without unnecessary complexity, and enable the organization to build and scale products that measurably improve the lives of millions of youth.
Strategic Financial Analysis (20%)
- Define and prioritize key financial metrics: Partner with the CEO, COO, Chief Education and Innovation Officer (CEdIO), and CPO to identify the most critical financial metrics for each product and stage of growth.
- Design and implement actionable systems: Lead the rollout of systems that translate complex financial data into clear, strategic insights for leadership decision-making.
- Enable leaders with practical financial tools: Equip operational and product leaders with intuitive financial models and core metrics they can actively use.
- Drive sustainable growth: Empower teams to make confident, strategic decisions that maximize financial sustainability and long-term impact for each product and program.
Compliance (10%)
- Partner with country teams to implement and monitor strict adherence to all risk management measures, internal controls, and financial regulations, including tax and human capital laws.
- Act on key reports and recommendations to strengthen and improve the organization’s financial ecosystem.
- Strategic Compliance Leadership: Ensure all critical compliance requirements are fully met, and lower-priority obligations are managed strategically, so that compliance matters never undermine organizational success.
External Reporting (15%)
- Lead financial forecasting and the creation, review, and analysis of reports to support strategic decision-making.
- Develop and review budgets for proposals and funder/payer reporting, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and timeliness.
- Deliver financial reporting to funders and the board that is reliable, transparent, and strategically framed, presenting complex budgets in the simplest, most understandable way for organization-wide clarity and efficiency.
- Streamline complex reporting processes to minimize time and effort while maintaining accuracy and insight.
Technology Leadership for Finance & Administration (15%)
- Drive continuous improvement of finance and administration systems by assessing team needs, auditing current processes, and researching industry best practices.
- Ensure global and country-level finance and admin functions leverage the most effective technology to operate efficiently, reduce costs, and strengthen overall financial sustainability.
- Lead technology initiatives that optimize workflows, increase productivity, and enhance the organization’s operational resilience.
Qualifications
Education and Experience
- An undergraduate degree is required, with a graduate degree preferred.
- 5-10 years of finance leadership experience, specifically including budgeting, accounting, and researching.
Skills and Attributes
- High integrity and trustworthiness.
- Meticulous attention to detail to ensure accurate financials.
- Strong reporting skills for clear communication with external funders and the Board.
- Excellent interpersonal and collaboration skills for working with global leaders.
- A strategic problem-solving and problem ownership orientation.
- Ability to apply financial modeling and simplicity in solution design to build lean finance systems that align with the organization's strategy.
