DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
17 May 2026-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)
ABOUT THE SCHOOL MEALS ACCELERATOR
School Meals Accelerator (the Accelerator) is the fifth and newest initiative under the School Meals Coalition, operating as an independent initiative while being hosted by the World Food Programme (WFP). It is designed to support governments to scale and strengthen their national school meal programmes and turn their ambitions into real impact. Acting as a network catalyst and convenor, the Accelerator mobilises resources and expertise from the right partners to deliver strategic technical assistance where it matters most.
The Accelerator’s mission is to unlock the full potential of national school meal programmes by improving design, scaling investment, and fostering collaboration across education, health, and food systems. It embraces a systems‑thinking approach, adapts to country priorities, and thrives in deep collaboration among global, regional, and local actors.
The Accelerator’s ambition is to help low‑ and lower‑middle‑income countries reach an additional 100 million children by 2030, making school meals a cornerstone of human capital development and a global standard of care.
It operates in conditions of high complexity. Because it operates as a network facilitator rather than a traditional organisation, its work spans multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system‑level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.
PURPOSE OF THIS ROLE
The Head of Engagement Team is a senior role in the Accelerator, reporting directly to the Director. The role leads and shapes the Accelerator’s political level engagement, positions the initiative to unlock strategic support, cultivates high‑value networks, and strengthens the high‑level relationships required to sustain a favourable authorising environment.
The postholder oversees and stewards the Accelerator’s Governance Committee—partnering with its Chair and members to enable meaningful co‑creation—and builds and maintains strategic relationships with the Chairs of the School Meals Coalition and its Secretariat, as well as the Support Mechanism of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty and other priority stakeholders.
The role defines, elevates, and amplifies the Accelerator’s narrative and supports the Director’s public positioning, articulating results and impact while expressing the initiative’s ethos and systemic way of working through innovative forms of storytelling. The postholder acts as Officer‑in‑Charge in the absence of the Director, maintaining continuity in decision‑making, performance and accountability.
The postholder is also expected to align, coordinate, and synchronise efforts with the School Meals Coalition Secretariat and other global initiatives to ensure coherent approaches, shared messaging, and integrated support to countries.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
Strategic leadership and execution:
* Support the development and execution of the Accelerator’s strategy and annual plans in close partnership with the Director.
* Translate strategic direction into clear priorities, objectives, and resourcing plans, while retaining flexibility to adapt in response to learning, feedback, and changing contexts.
* Support the Director in overseeing the execution of strategic decisions by establishing performance and quality‑assurance mechanisms that enable timely course‑correction while preserving learning, experimentation, and adaptive practice, and ensuring coherence with WFP policies, governance requirements, and HQ processes.
* Serve as Officer‑in‑Charge in the absence of the Director, ensuring continuity of leadership, decision‑making, risk management, and external engagement.
Strategic engagement & Leadership Coordination:
* Lead and expand SMA’s high‑level external engagement by positioning the Accelerator in priority political and institutional arenas and cultivating influential networks that reinforce SMA’s authorising environment.
* Advise the Director with timely political intelligence, stakeholder analysis, and strategic counsel to inform engagement priorities, partnerships, and external influence.
* Lead the consolidation of engagement‑related information flows across country, technical, and operational teams, ensuring leadership receives well‑synthesised inputs on cross‑cutting priorities, risks, and emerging issues.
* Strengthen alignment across SMA by stewarding leadership routines, decision‑making rhythms, and clear communication pathways that translate decisions into coordinated action.
Governance Stewardship & Institutional Coordination:
* Steward the effective functioning of SMA’s Governance Committee by partnering with the Chair and members to shape strategic agendas, surface tensions, and frame choices around risks, resources, and system‑wide implications.
* Translate insights from across SMA into decision‑ready framing that supports sound judgement in a complex systems context.
* Ensure governance discipline by clarifying roles and timelines, tracking follow‑through on decisions, and strengthening governance routines, documentation, and review processes.
Strategic Narratives & Leadership Sense‑Making:
* Shape and evolve the Accelerator’s overarching narrative so it conveys SMA’s systemic ethos, emerging impact, and political relevance. Draw on insights from governance, partnerships, country engagement, and internal processes to support shared understanding of how change is unfolding and why it matters.
* Strengthen and amplify the Director’s leadership voice through strategic framing, narrative arcs, and messaging that communicate both progress and learning, and work closely with storytelling and communications colleagues to ensure coherence across all public‑facing products and reinforcement of SMA’s credibility, strategic intent, and distinctive way of working.
People Leadership, Ways of Working & Culture:
* Model and champion SMA’s systemic leadership mindsets, demonstrating sound judgement, political and cultural acuity, and the ability to steward complex relationships and decisions across a multi‑country institutional ecosystem.
* Cultivate and sustain a high‑trust, high‑performance culture by promoting shared leadership standards, embedding disciplined communication and predictable working rhythms, and strengthening coordination across country, operational, technical, and narrative teams.
Learning, Continuous Improvement & Knowledge:
* Drive and institutionalise learning across SMA’s leadership and engagement functions by capturing and synthesising insights from governance processes, external relationships, and political engagement, and feeding these into strategy, delivery, and institutional positioning.
* Embed reflective practice and continuous improvement by leading and contributing to after‑action reviews, leadership reflections, and learning sessions, and by codifying lessons into tools, guidance, and protocols that strengthen SMA’s systemic leadership and engagement practices over time.
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
Education: Advanced university degree in Public Administration, International Development, International Relations, Organizational Development, Business or Management, Political Science, Public Policy, or another relevant field; or a first university degree with additional years of relevant professional experience and/or advanced training.
Experience:
* At least eleven years of progressively senior leadership experience advising or supporting high‑level officials in complex international, political, or multi‑stakeholder environments, shaping strategy, informing decision‑making, and stewarding high‑stakes institutional relationships.
* Demonstrated international experience forging and sustaining collaboration with diverse partners—including governments, International Financial Institutions, UN agencies, civil society, private sector, and academia—across regions and organisational hierarchies.
* Proven experience leading high‑level political and institutional engagement, including navigating sensitive contexts, managing tensions, and representing senior leadership with diplomacy, judgement, and contextual intelligence.
* Track record of shaping and strengthening governance bodies (e.g., steering committees, advisory groups), including designing agendas, synthesising strategic inputs, framing decisions, and ensuring robust follow‑through for senior actors.
* Substantial experience driving strategic communications and narrative development, including crafting executive messages, speeches, and strategic materials that influence institutional partners, donors, and opinion leaders and enhance organisational positioning.
Knowledge & Skills:
* Exceptional communication and narrative crafting capability, able to architect high impact messages, strategic stories, and speeches tailored to senior audiences, political moments, and system level dynamics.
* Strong strategic judgement and political acuity, with the ability to interpret and anticipate complex institutional and political dynamics and advise senior leadership with clarity, foresight, and nuance.
* Advanced analytical and synthesis skills, able to distil technical, political, and country level insights into crisp, decision‑ready briefs that drive alignment, illuminate trade‑offs, and strengthen sound governance.
* Expertise in strategic communications, storytelling, and reputational risk management, ensuring that messaging is coherent, credible, and aligned with SMA’s systemic ethos and institutional identity.
* High level facilitation and coordination skills, enabling effective leadership routines, structured decision processes, and disciplined follow‑through across diverse teams, governance mechanisms, and multi‑country constellations.
* Strong interpersonal, diplomatic, and relational intelligence, able to build trust, steward sensitive relationships, and exercise mature judgement when engaging senior officials and navigating politically complex scenarios, in line with SMA’s systemic leadership approach.
Languages: Fluency (level C) in English; intermediate (level B) in a second official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish).
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
This is an International Professional position, open to candidates of all nationalities.
The selected candidate will be appointed on a fixed‑term contract for an initial period of two years, with the possibility of renewal based on operational requirements, performance, and the availability of funding. The probationary period will be one year.
This position is open to both internal and external applicants. For candidates currently employed at WFP on a rotational Fixed‑Term Contract, acceptance of an offer with the School Meals Accelerator will be subject to the contractual terms outlined in Annex 3 (Staffing Management), under the Fixed‑Term Contractual Modalities described in Section 1.1. This includes provisions related to return rights and other applicable conditions.
WFP offers an attractive compensation and benefits package in line with ICSC standards (http://icsc.un.org) including basic salary, post adjustment, relocation entitlement, visa, travel and shipment allowances, 30 days’ annual leave, home leave, an education grant for dependent children, a pension plan, and medical insurance.
The selected candidate will be required to relocate to Rome, Italy to take up this assignment.
ANNEX: OVERVIEW OF THE SMA SYSTEMIC LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK
The School Meals Accelerator (SMA) works in conditions of high complexity, spanning multiple countries, organisations and institutional logics, and seeks to support system‑level change rather than the delivery of predefined solutions.
The SMA Systemic Leadership Framework provides a shared language and reference point for how leadership is understood and enacted across the organisation. It describes six leadership mindsets:
* We see systems change as starting with us: We notice and work with how our roles, assumptions and responses shape what becomes possible in the system.
* We experiment our way forward: We use disciplined experimentation and learning to make progress in conditions of uncertainty.
* We put countries’ needs first: We orient our work around the priorities, contexts and capacities of countries, rather than organisational convenience or external agendas.
* We value different perspectives – even when they clash: We work productively with difference, tension and disagreement to support learning and systemic change.
* We teach and learn from one another: We treat learning as a shared, ongoing responsibility and use everyday work as a source of individual and collective development.
* We are intentional about how and when we act – not simply defaulting to urgency: We treat pace and timing as deliberate leadership choices, choosing actions that support learning and lasting change rather than activity for its own sake.
REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
The School Meals Accelerator is committed to ensuring an inclusive, accessible, and supportive recruitment process for all candidates. If you require a reasonable accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process, please reach out to: global.inclusion@wfp.org. We will be happy to assist you.
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