Title: Project and Engagement Fellow, Strategic Solutions Group
Department : Strategic Solutions Group (SSG), Office of the CEO
Reports to: Senior Advisor, Strategic Solutions Group
Matrix Management : N/A
Supervises: N/A
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Duration: Six months
Stipend: USD 600 per month
Background
The Strategic Solutions Group is a new initiative within AWF, sitting in the Office of the CEO. It is a pan-African platform through which governments, institutions, funders and partners can draw on AWF’s expertise, tools, relationships and convening power to turn their conservation and development priorities into financed, implementable and scalable action. The ambition is to extend AWF’s impact far beyond our direct footprint by working with and through others: strengthening African leaders and institutions, advancing African-led conservation solutions, and helping proven approaches travel across landscapes, sectors and countries, so that Africa’s wildlife, wild lands and the people and economies that depend on them all benefit.
SSG will work across ministries of planning, finance and environment as well as protected area authorities, national funds and private-sector actors, bringing the latest technological and methodological innovations together with AWF’s decades of conservation experience. It will keep a small senior core and scale through a pool of experts and partners, and it will act as a space for AWF to test new ways of working and share what it learns with the wider organisation.
SSG is at the very beginning. We are shaping its charter and operating model, building the expert and partner pool, and listening to AWF’s country and landscape teams about where support is most needed. A number of exciting early engagements are in discussion across the continent. This is a rare chance to be part of building something new at AWF from the ground up.
SSG’s approach to fellowships
SSG fellowships are project-based internships for students and recent graduates. We call them fellowships because they are not typical internships: each Fellow is given one defined piece of work with a clear beginning and end, specific deliverables, and a final product they can point to when they leave. The Fellow runs their workstream day to day with regular direction, coaching and quality assurance from the Senior Advisor. The intention is that the Fellow finishes with concrete, portfolio-worthy experience of helping to stand up a new advisory platform, rather than a record of shadowing or general support.
In practice this means: a written project brief agreed in the first two weeks; weekly check-ins and a monthly review against the deliverables; a named supervisor plus access to AWF colleagues and the SSG expert pool; a mid-point review at three months; and a final presentation of the project to the SSG and Office of the CEO team at the end of the six months.
Position Summary
The Fellow will lead the project management and operating toolkit for SSG’s launch. We are looking for a student or recent graduate with an engineering, operations or consulting background rather than a conservation generalist: someone who can turn a brief into a workplan, keep several workstreams moving, and build the templates and trackers that a new advisory platform runs on. The work is project-specific and will attach to whichever early engagements are confirmed, while building the systems SSG needs regardless of which projects go ahead.
Key responsibilities
Expected deliverables
Required qualifications and skills