Start-Up Specialist (Consultant)

Kaizen, A Tetra Tech Company is an international development consulting firm and an incubator for innovative, scalable solutions that address emerging market challenges and opportunities. Our proven solutions catalyze locally driven organizational and institutional performance improvements and establish communities of practice that facilitate peer-to-peer learning and the achievement of shared goals. We aspire to transform the nature and impact of development assistance and work to strengthen organizations and institutions through innovative approaches to organizational development, reform, and change.
We are seeking a Start-up Specialist to support the start-up of the project, Pakistan Climate Smart Agriculture, and project office in Islamabad.
About Pakistan Climate Smart Agriculture:
The recently awarded five-year USAID/Pakistan Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) activity is part of the U.S.-Pakistan "Green Alliance" framework, aimed at fostering bilateral cooperation to address climate, environmental, and economic challenges. This initiative focuses on building resilience within farming communities by promoting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and technologies. By increasing agricultural productivity and incomes sustainably, the CSA activity aligns with USAID’s goals of inclusive economic growth, gender equity, and environmental stewardship. Activities will be implemented in a context-sensitive manner to promote increased agricultural productivity; higher resilience to climate change; and economic participation and greater incomes of socially marginalized groups, women, and girls at different stages of agricultural production and processing. In partnering with the private sector, civil society, and government stakeholders, Pakistan CSA aims to maximize the effectiveness and impact of investments. Targeted project interventions will be conducted in Punjab, Sindh, KP, and Balochistan provinces. This project is implemented by The Kaizen Company on behalf of Tetra Tech.
Consultancy Overview:
The Start-up Specialist will support a rapid start-up of the project and project office, including initiating procurement actions, identifying office and events space, participating in recruitment and training of project staff, among others.
Location: Virtual (EST time zone preferred)
Contract type: Short-term consultant (part time; approx. 2 months)
Responsibilities and Tasks:
Responsibilities and tasks will include, but are not limited to:

• Support Home Office personnel with start-up of all program operations to ensure the rapid start-up of program implementation and a smooth transition from start-up phase to full implementation.
• Initiate/support procurement actions for office furniture, vehicles, and equipment, among others.
• Work with local lawyer to review and revise project office manuals and staff employment agreement templates, as needed.
• Participate in interviews and support training of project operations staff (HR, Finance, Grants, etc).
• Support the customization of project manuals.
• Provide formatting and editing support to project deliverables.
• Other task as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Required
  
  • Master’s degree in a relevant field with a minimum of two years of experience with program management and operations or related functions; or a Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field with a minimum of three years’ experience
  • Experience supporting USAID and/or USAID-funded Activities
  • Knowledge of the procurement process, from start to finish.
  • Excellent written and oral communication, facilitation, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
  • Strong skills for planning and execution – driven to produce high quality work on time.
  • Ability to manage multiple priorities efficiently and effectively – plus, respond with to changing priorities and circumstances with flexibility and agility.
• Preferred:
  
  • Experience implementing projects in Pakistan especially with a focus on project Operations, Accounting and/or HR.