THE ORGANISATION:
The British Council is the world’s leading cultural relations organisation and creates opportunities for people in the UK and worldwide to understand each other, to work together and learn from one another. We see this as crucial to building secure, more prosperous and sustainable futures for us all. We build trust and understanding between different countries and cultures and develop strong international links that are of benefit to people in Britain and the rest of the world. We call this work – cultural relations.
In a world where three billion people today are under 25 years old and where 40 per cent of the estimated 160 million unemployed worldwide are young people, providing high-quality educational opportunities and skills is one of the most pressing issues of our time. The link between education attainment and economic opportunity is clear. Young people want quality education and skills and countries that provide them are more likely to have prosperous and stable societies.
Through our global network and platform of activities we make a vital contribution to cultural relations through:
• Enhanced UK leadership of and shared learning from international education
• Societies whose young people, citizens and institutions contribute to a more inclusive, open and prosperous world.
We convene, collaborate and create insight, understanding and innovation to enable individuals, institutions and societies to live and work in our complex world, to embrace opportunities and to achieve solutions to the challenges we jointly face. We work in partnership to co-create with those who share our values and we provide client-funded products and services that further our mission and enhance the reputation of the United Kingdom. We sustain our engagement with people, institutions and decision makers through sector and subject content and its communication including through digital channels.
We achieve this through five platforms of activity and content areas that work across all platform areas.
• Internationalising Higher Education
• Schools
• Skills
• Youth and Society
• Governance and Civil Society
OUR EQUALITY COMMITMENT:
Valuing diversity is essential to the British Council’s work. We aim to abide by and promote equality legislation by following both the letter and the spirit of it to try and avoid unjustified discrimination, recognising discrimination as a barrier to equality of opportunity, inclusion and human rights.
All staff worldwide are required to ensure their behaviour is consistent with our policies.
THE OPPORTUNITY:
We have an excellent opportunity To manage the continued integration, performance and development of the Security, Justice and Conflict Resolution Portfolio to support the increased scope and ambition of the SSA E+S business.
The Portolio Manager will be responsible for the management of the full portfolio within the Security, Justice and Conflict Resolution sector across the various funding streams, namely grant/ODA, partnership and client funded. The primary focus of this role is to provide leadership to the exisiting portfolio and to generate new business in the sector, in alignment wih regional and global Society strategies. The Portfolio Manager will accomplish this through demonstrating in house and associate sector strength, leading regional sector development thinking and strategy development both internally and externally. The portfolio manager has overall responsibility for the capture of new business and quality assurance of implementation, and will draw heavily on in house technical advisers and the E&S operations team and external resources to do this.
The successful candidate must be experienced in Team Leadership, managing diverse teams to achieve objectives. Have significant experience of client/donor funded contracts and delivery process. Experience of interpreting complex business and market intelligence to ensure delivery of challenging business targets and excellent communication skills.
Some of the main duties include:
• Leading portfolio strategy development and delivery, ensuring the integration and growth of the sector portfolio across funding streams
• Support wider integration of the portfolio with other Society portfolios within the E&S SBU (Governance and Civil Society, Empowerment of Women & Girls, and Social Enterprise) and with other SBUs (eg Arts) and cross-cutting initiatives (eg Culture & Development).
• Identify, track and resource forthcoming business opportunities within the sector, across funding streams, and with a broader spectrum of potential clients and partners than at present
• Lead and manage the design and development of high quality, robust evidence-led technical proposals, drawing on in-house sector expertise and external associate networks. The Portfolio Manager should ensure a success rate of 40% or higher
The British Council is committed to a policy of equal opportunity and is keen to reflect the diversity of UK society at every level within the organisation. We welcome applications from all sections of the community. In line with the British Council's Child Protection policy, any appointment is contingent on thorough checks. In the UK, and in other countries where appropriate systems exist, these include criminal records checks.
