Vacancy title:
Rwanda Managing Director

Jobs at:
EarthEnable Rwanda

Deadline of this Job:
Open

Duty Station:
Kigali, Rwanda

JOB DETAILS:
JOB DESCRIPTION: Rwanda Managing Director
Company: EarthEnable Rwanda
Reports to: CEO, Gayatri Datar
Location: Nyamata, Rwanda – with significant time in rural villages across all districts
Compensation: Competitive and commensurate with experience

Who We Are
At EarthEnable, we believe that our clients deserve our very best; that morning high-fives are the best way to start the day, and that the best ideas could come from any part of the company. We celebrate each other’s wins, learn from our setbacks, and are deeply proud of the impact we make every day. We believe that a clean, dust-free floor means more than living in a healthy home. It means pride and dignity in the place our customers most treasure: their homes. Being a part of our team means more than building floors. It means building an organization and building a better future for rural families.

What We Do
EarthEnable is transforming the way people live, by making homes healthier for families across rural Rwanda. 80% of Rwandans live in homes with dirt floors which are dusty, unsanitary, and fertile breeding grounds for parasites and germs. While replacing a dirt floor with concrete has significant health benefits (e.g. reducing diarrhea by 50% and parasitic infections by 80%), concrete is unaffordable for many who need it. EarthEnable addresses this pressing and ubiquitous problem by selling high-quality, earthen floors that are 80% cheaper than concrete with 90% less embedded energy. Earthen floors are already prevalent in modern homes in the United States and are composed of natural materials (gravel, clay, sand, and laterite). EarthEnable trains and hires local masons to install the floors which are sealed using a proprietary drying oil that makes them waterproof, strong, and polished. In our first 3 years of operations, EarthEnable has installed floors for over 2,000 families and generated livelihoods for over 200 Rwandese staff.

About the Role
We are looking for a dynamic and visionary Managing Director who is ready for the challenge and the impact opportunity of a career. Due to an incredibly exciting new partnership with the Government of Rwanda, EarthEnable will be scaling from 1,000 floors last year to 50,000 over the next 1.5 years, and as a result, require significant organizational and operational changes. This person will get to own a variety of exciting and challenging tasks, including managing multi-stakeholder government relations, hiring and developing a team to oversee this rapid growth, managing the country budget, and ensuring we preserve our quality standards and maintain exceptional customer satisfaction. This job is for someone ready to work incredibly hard to lead a high-impact company through ten years of growth in just one.
This Managing Director will receive significant support from the CEO and COO. There will be a consistent blend of office and field work. The successful candidate will be willing to get his or her hands dirty and work closely with masons and sales reps, while having an eye for the bigger picture and growth projections of the company. We are looking for someone who is adept at detailed planning, a quick learner, and an entrepreneurial self-starter.

The responsibilities of this role will include, but certainly not be limited to:
Strategic Planning and Execution

• Work with CEO to develop rapid scale strategy and identify necessary systems and expertise to achieve rapid scale
• Manage execution of strategy across all departments, and ensure strategies are aligned and coordinated across departments to avoid inconsistencies or overlap in workstreams, setting targets and KPIs for each quarter
• Drive systems and processes necessary to assure quality (e.g. implementing ISO 9001)
• Communicate strategy and implementation plan throughout the company, guide all change management as required
• Manage, support, and ensure success of each department head in Rwanda
• Regularly visit customer sites to ensure appropriate financial and operational processes are in place
• Actively seek the support of global functional directors and managers for support in systems development, team capacity building, and problem solving
  Team Building
•  Support CEO in adapting EarthEnable’s organization chart to fit evolving company needs
• Grow EarthEnable’s Rwanda staff by hiring along with the needs of the organization, including recognizing when new roles need to be created
• Mentor and develop senior and junior staff to ensure the success of the Rwanda operation
  Financial Management
• Ultimate profit and loss responsibility in Rwanda: ensure minimization of operational costs while maximizing customer satisfaction
• Work closely with Finance to analyze budgets and actuals across various units
• Ensure fiscal responsibility in all budgets and spending, prioritizing cost cutting and cost saving
• Work with Finance to ensure taxes and payroll are completed on time
  
  Partnership Management
• Represent EarthEnable and its organizational ethic to local and national government officials and government agencies (Ministries, local labor office, SACCOs, cooperatives, etc.)
• Work closely with partners to coordinate execution of jointly developed plans, assure floor quality, and deliver excellent customer service
• Identify possible new partners in Rwanda and create and manage relationships with them

Qualifications

• Exceptional people skills and managerial skills; avid team player with a coaching and mentoring approach
• Strong analytical skills, including Excel modelling and data analysis
• Ability to work on a variety of tasks at the same time, and keep track of a variety of workstreams
• Resourcefulness and critical thinking skills to quickly determine why something isn’t working and iterate quickly to try to solve it; creative problem solving
• Excellent attention to detail, commitment to excellence, and outstanding work ethic
• Strong understanding of accounting, budget management, and financial management
• Passionate about international development and social enterprise
• Commitment to working in rural environments across Rwanda
• Fluency (or advanced business proficiency) in English and Kinyarwanda
• Hard working and gritty to push through challenges
• Flexible and adaptable to changing environments; thrives in a bootstrapped culture
• Maturity and poise under stress
• Optimistic attitude, sense of humor, entrepreneurial spirit, curiosity to learn new things, creative problem solver, humble and patient team-player with a sense of humor
• Strong technology skills (knowledge of Word, Excel, Salesforce, Google Docs, and Dropbox)
• 10 years of work experience, with 5 years of management experience (experience with fast-growing ventures is a plus)
• B.A. in business, management, marketing, economics or a related field required; graduate degree (MBA, MPA/ID, MPA, MPH etc.) a plus, but not required

Job application procedure
Apply online at https://www.earthenable.org/applynow/  In your cover letter, please state what excites you most about this role, and what you think will be most challenging about it.