Programme Head/Director, Government Climate Campus

Overview

• Start date: As soon as possible
• Team: Partnerships. You’ll work closely with team members across the company, including the management team and colleagues in communications, operations, product and events teams.
• Reporting to: Chief Partnerships Officer and Director of Partnerships
• Visa sponsorship: Not available. You must have the right to work in the UK
• Background checks: Due to the nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees are required to pass BPSS verification

Role

The Programme Head/Director of the Government Climate Campus will join our Partnerships team and play a leading role in Apolitical’s strategy and partnerships on climate.

Launched in November 2022, the Government Climate Campus aims to build government workforces capable of delivering on climate and nature goals. The Government Climate Campus equips public servants in the most important topics, roles and countries to halve emissions this decade – including specialised training for practitioners and leaders, whose roles may have the most impact.

The Government Climate Campus has several stakeholders including governments, philanthropic bodies, academic institutions, academic experts and network bodies. Your role is to strategically lead this project and represent Apolitical externally in fora related to climate change and sustainability. 

The aims of the role are to:

• Direct and represent our flagship programme, the Government Climate Campus, directly contributing to revenue and NPS targets
• Formulate and deliver on an evolving scale and impact strategy for the Campus
• Communicate Apolitical’s learning and training offer to governments and other external stakeholders
• Promote the personal and professional development of your team
• Add valuable insights to the Partnerships and wider Apolitical team

Role breakdown

Strategy

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Engage with senior government officials and policymakers to ensure the training programme promotes broader governmental climate strategies and initiatives
• Secure and develop partnerships with governments (departments, schools for government and other agencies) to design and deliver high-quality climate learning/training programme
• Represent Apolitical externally at relevant conferences and events, communicating expertise and insights

External Presentations/Communications:

• Keep up to date on the latest developments on the Campus and in the field, and be ready to present to varied audiences on a regular basis. While most presentations may be virtual, some amount of travel is expected (domestic and international)

Programme Development, Strategy and Policy Expertise:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive Campus strategy aligned with Apolitical’s goals, government demand and commitments to partner funders.
• Identify and prioritise training needs based on user research and emerging trends, communicating these to the Learning team and other relevant stakeholders 

Governance and Compliance:

• Ensure that the training programme adheres to current – and reacts to emerging – relevant legal, ethical, and regulatory standards, in all modes of delivery.

Operations

Innovation and Research:

• Stay abreast of the latest research in climate and developments in climate related policy
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement in the Government Climate Campus team, both on climate and on other professional development topics

Programme Management (cross-functional):

• Work with the Director of Partnerships and the Senior Partnerships Manager to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Government Climate Campus, including scheduling, resource allocation, and budget management
• Work with the Evaluation team to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the Government Climate Campus, making adjustments as necessary to improve outcomes
• Work with the Learning, Events, and Research teams to ensure the training materials developed are up-to-date and relevant

About you

This is a senior role, so we expect a minimum of 5 years in a similar role. Relevant experience would include positions related to climate or sustainability, with a preference for a policy or research background. We would also prioritise external-facing partnership roles, with a preference for roles focused on governments or foundations.

This is a great fit if you…

• Have a keen interest in the intersection of climate policy and government, and a level of expertise (whether in climate science or a similar domain, or in climate policy)
• Are self-assured presenting to and engaging with senior and expert external stakeholders
• Have worked in complex, multi-stakeholder environments

Let us know if you have…

• Experience working in or with government, especially in the domain of technology and/or Learning & Development
• Experience in delivery of online learning and/or in ed tech
• Programme management experience in complex and multi-stakeholder environments

This won't be the right role if...

• You don't enjoy public speaking
• You don't enjoy the external-facing aspects of programme management

Application Process

Apolitical uses Applied in our recruitment. Applied aims to overcome unconscious bias in recruiting. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test skills needed for the role. The answers are then anonymised and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. 

The Applied platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. No one at Apolitical sees the answers to these demographic questions with your application. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired, irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions. 

Using AI in your application

At Apolitical, we embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work. However, as AI becomes more prevalent, it can be difficult to distinguish between machine-generated content and the unique perspectives of candidates. To stand out in our hiring process, we encourage you to use AI judiciously and ensure that your application reflects your genuine voice. We value originality and authenticity, and we're particularly interested in seeing how your unique insights can contribute to our mission. 

Stages in our hiring process:

• Culture interview [45m on Google Meet]. We ask you questions on fundamental skills and behaviours for working at Apolitical, as an individual contributor and as a manager. This call is about finding candidates who will add to our culture. It’s an opportunity to get to know you and for you to get to know us as an organisation, so we make time at the end for you to ask us questions about how we work. 
• Team interview [45 on Google Meet]. We ask you questions on fundamental skills and behaviours for the role. It’s an opportunity to meet some of the people you might end up working with, so we make time at the end for you to ask us questions about the team and role.
• We may introduce a work sample after the team interview, depending on the number of candidates in the pipeline. We use work samples to see how you approach problems and give you a sense of the type of work you would be doing in the role. We use them because they’re reliable in assessing and predicting performance in a role. Our work samples are designed to take less than 2 hours to complete.
• Chief Executive interview [30m on Google Meet]. We build on conversations you've had with other team members to learn about your motivations and drivers at work and within the Apolitical context.