Who We Are!
🌍 Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined.
At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent.
Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by:
- Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and
- Delivering livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.
To date, more than 500,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.
Educate! is a team of over 300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows.
We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Livelihood Impact Fund, Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.
Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.
Good to note: To Our Awesome Applicants! 🚀💫
We know that incredible candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don’t meet every requirement. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply!
We’re looking for passionate individuals who believe in our mission and can bring unique perspectives to our team—not just those who check every box. We value diversity and strongly encourage women and individuals from all backgrounds to apply.
Position Overview
At Educate! The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is a pivotal C-Suite leader responsible for the entire financial health of the organization. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be the strategic architect who not only manages the core numbers and financial systems but also communicates the compelling narrative of Educate!'s financial present and future to the Leadership, Board, and global team. Your mission is to build and manage the organizational infrastructure—including staffing, systems, and processes—to ensure peak performance against our ambitious impact objectives. This challenge involves high-level strategic planning in Financial Oversight, building bespoke financial Systems, driving Strategic Financial Analysis, managing all External Reporting, leading the Finance and Admin Technology roadmap, and ensuring absolute Compliance across all countries of operation. If you are an experienced finance leader ready to build, strategize, and execute finance systems that directly contribute to massive social impact, this is your next challenge. The title and level of the role will be determined based on the qualifications and experience of the successful candidate.
What You’ll Do🌟
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.
- Your work will 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 us 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.
Who You Are 🦸♀️🦸♂️
- An undergraduate degree is required, with a graduate degree preferred.
- Experience: 5-10 years of finance leadership experience, specifically including budgeting, accounting, and researching.
- High integrity and trustworthiness and 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.
- Resonate with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
Terms💼
- A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
- Competitive salary based on market factors and commensurate with experience.
- Benefits will align with the country of hire (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, or, Rwanda) and typically include medical and travel insurance, Learning & growth opportunities, flexibility on work hours when needed and hybrid work, paid leave plus one week of office closure over the December holidays, and more.
- African candidates strongly preferred.
- We will also consider applications from exceptional candidates based outside East Africa and the UK, where we do not have a physical office. For these candidates, the role will be remote and will involve substantial travel.
Our Culture & Tenets(Values) 🌱
We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.
- We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We are purpose-driven, focused on impact, and prioritize what truly matters. We listen to youth, design our efforts around their needs, and ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences they value.
- We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results—proactively identifying problems and seeking solutions without waiting or stopping at what's requested.
- We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded and continuously try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
- We are One Team, Many Views - We value all individuals, believe diverse ideas and open dialogue drive excellence, foster a supportive and respectful environment where everyone can freely express themselves. We work as one team and prioritize the organization's mission over personal or team interests.
- We have the Startup Mindset - We innovate relentlessly to grow our impact, we never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.”We constantly challenge the status quo, embrace change, and move quickly toward our vision. Unafraid of failure, we question anything that hinders progress.
Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.
We’re committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety. As part of the process, you’ll need to provide a Certificate of Good Conduct. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw employment offers if any risks to youth are identified.
