Description:
Title: Senior Manager, Research Design & Practice
Employee Status: Full Time Exempt
Salary: Grade 6
Starting range of $93,800 – $105,600 | Chicago
Reports to: Managing Director, Community Data Insights
Department: Social Impact Accelerator
Location: Chicago, IL
Hybrid: In office: T/W | WFH: M/Th/F
Department Function: The Social Impact Accelerator (SIA) develops and implements processes, systems, and structures to facilitate, coordinate, and hold IFF accountable for equity in practice, cross-functional collaboration, innovation, scaling of impact, and systems change. SIA comprises five interdependent functions: Strategic Insights; Strategic Response; Organizational Learning; Sector-Based Strategy; and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Organizational Learning leads the design, development, implementation, and continuous improvement of processes, systems, and ways of working that enable IFF to be an organization that shares and applies learning garnered both through our external research and our internal evaluation and reflection to ensure deeper, more sustained impact for IFF, our customers, and the communities we serve.

BASIC JOB FUNCTION

The goal of IFF’s Organizational Learning team is to transform IFF into an organization that facilitates shared and applied learning and, through systematic evaluation and reflection, continuously improves in response to the needs of our customers and the communities that we serve. We do this by:

• Guiding thoughtful design of strategic stakeholder research and learning plans
• Evaluating results of projects and programs and recommending iterative updates to IFF approaches
• Cultivating a learning and experimentation culture in IFF associates’ daily practices
• Architecting and building shared knowledge systems across IFF
• Gleaning insights and promoting best practices from IFF’s wealth of experience

The Senior Manager, Research Strategy & Practice is an outcomes-driven research, evaluation and learning who creates thoughtful approaches to project- and organization-level insights, as well as promoting a culture of learning- in-practice across IFF’s teams and offices.
IFF is looking for candidates with a commitment to the work we do who can demonstrate their creativity, diligence, enthusiasm, growth-mindset, thoughtfulness, and passion to make meaningful change in the areas of economic and racial justice.
Requirements:

POSITION QUALIFICATIONS:

Education: Bachelor’s Degree required, or equivalent experience in a similar position.

Previous Experience:

• Seven years of experience leading customer, user experience, and/or evaluation research. This may include surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, online diaries, etc.
• Exposure to impact measurement and management, theories of change, and evaluation design.
• Experience conducting reviews of external sources (scholarly publications, news articles, external databases, etc.) and facilitating collaborative brainstorming and synthesis sessions

Additional Requirements: Regular travel throughout the Midwest region; occasional early start or extended hours and evening or weekend work.

1. Collaborates across the Social Impact Accelerator and IFF’s Core Business Functions to design and execute interdisciplinary research & evaluation plans rooted in IFF’s theory of change.
2. Provides guidance, design, and execution of replicable and scalable primary research on IFF customer projects, including community needs assessments.
3. Centers the voices of the organizations and communities that IFF serves in the learning design and execution process.
4. Performs cross-project reviews of literature (internal and external) and data analysis to derive and share learnings that can be applied across sectors, geographies, etc.
5. Facilitates collaborative insights-into-action sessions with IFF teams to create shared understanding and translate it into applied learning.
6. Contributes to the creation and rollout of shared knowledge systems and practices.
7. Demonstrates a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Promotes an environment of empathy and respect, ensures the inclusion of all team members, and will actively engage in EDI events and learning opportunities.
8. Perform other projects as assigned.