Position: Associate, Social Innovation

Organization: Teach For India 

Location: Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad

Apply: https://teachforindia.secure.force.com/careers/job?id=a0i6F00000c3K0iQAE

What Teach For India Can Offer You

• The opportunity to be part of one of the most established and visionary movements in the education sector in India which is at a pivotal point in terms of expanding its scale and outreach across the nation and working with changemakers across the country.
• A challenging yet flexible workplace in which every individual employee’s Staff journey is tracked for excellence and leadership development.
• A work environment in which employees’ holistic well-being is a core priority, enabling people to be their best selves.
• Access to connections and resources from the global Teach For All network that includes partner organizations spanning 50+ countries across 6 continents.
• Remuneration that is competitive within the top quartile of the Indian NGO pay scales, and a benefits package that includes extensive medical insurance and maternity coverage for both parents.

Position Summary

As Associate, Social Innovation you will play a critical role in executing the vision and strategy of Teach For India – to support Alumni and Fellows to launch innovative new enterprises and projects in the education space. You will be responsible for supporting InnovatED and Be The Change Project – Teach For India’s national platforms for early-stage Alumni entrepreneurs and Fellow project leads.

Through this role, you will be helping promising education entrepreneurs overcome the barriers that exist between coming up with a great idea and building strong, sustainable organizations and projects.

The opportunity – what’s in it for you?

• You will have the unique opportunity to contribute to the development of game-changing innovations and the growth of high-potential social entrepreneurs looking to reimagine the education system in India.
• This role requires a composite skillset, and to succeed in this role, you will need to demonstrate a range of competencies and wear multiple hats required to run a national-level, decentralized incubation initiative and create a strong infrastructure to nurture social innovation at Teach For India.
• Our strong belief is that one cannot support entrepreneurs without being entrepreneurial oneself, therefore the way you operate in this role would mirror typical entrepreneur qualities such as openness, continuous learning, resourcefulness, being iterative, listening to the user, and the ability to pitch yourself and your work.
• You will have excellent opportunities to forge partnerships, interact with, and learn from incubators, entrepreneur-enablers, venture capitalists, and global social innovation advocates across India and the globe like Teach For All, Teach First, IIM Bangalore, MIT, Harvard University, N/Core, Villgro, Unltd India, Menterra, Village Capital, etc.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibility: Lead key components of InnovatED initiative end-to-end

• Operations: You will lead operations for the overall InnovatED initiative based on user feedback and strengthen existing operating procedures. You will also be responsible for managing convenings, sessions, calls, and other spaces / platforms of interactions for entrepreneurs.
• Communications and storytelling: You will create creatives, decks, and collaterals to evangelize the InnovatED initiative to both prospective entrepreneurs and diverse players in the ecosystem (such as incubators, funders, non-profits, government, and media). You will also manage InnovatED’s social media channels like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Community management: You will implement systems and processes to build thriving and sustainable communities of entrepreneurs.
• Outreach: You will drive awareness-building activities to spread the word about InnovatED and what it offers – to promising, eligible entrepreneurs from the Teach For India network – which includes both Alumni and Fellows, particularly those running Be The Change Projects (BTCPs). This would include a multi-channel marketing and communications campaign.
• Relationship-building and networking: You will liaise with different verticals in Teach For India like the Finance, Human Resource, Development, and Communication teams of Teach For India and set up strong processes – in service of the program and our entrepreneurs. You will also assist the Manager to forge long-term, goodwill-based partnerships with a range of ecosystem actors and build positive and enduring relationships with every entrepreneur incubated by InnovatED.
• Delivering the program: You will support the implementation of the 6 core elements of InnovatED’s value proposition – access to funding, access to a dedicated coach, series of national innovation bootcamps, peer community of entrepreneurs, access to the ecosystem, and a knowledge toolkit. You will support in conducting a rigorous, multi-stage selection process to handpick the most promising entrepreneurs via a combination of internal and external selection events.
• Data evaluation and impact: You will support in continuously gauging the efficacy of InnovatED as an initiative, and help make data-driven decisions based on the insights you generate. You will collect data from entrepreneurs and network partners about their experience of the services we provide and products we develop, monitor the organizational health and individual development of the entrepreneurs we incubate. You will also assist in reporting the impact of InnovatED and the impact of our entrepreneurs – to donors and other internal and external stakeholders.
• Delivering events: You will be responsible for executing three residential boot-camps every year in different cities in India. This will require you to be strong on operations, logistics, planning, as well as influencing stakeholders and the entrepreneur community.
• Project management and codification: As part of the core team, you will maintain a record of all the important information about the project, monitor progress across all the different workstreams, and codify knowledge and insights for the benefit of entrepreneurs, your larger team, the organization, and the ecosystem.
• Developing knowledge frameworks: You will play an important role in improving, democratizing, and evangelizing InnovatED’s knowledge frameworks.

Additional Responsibilities

Secondary responsibility: Lead key components of Be The Change Project initiative end-to-end

• Platform management: Manage and develop the future phases of the ‘Be The Change’ technology platform which is created to store social-innovation projects’ data and enable the streamlined flow of information, resources, and connections for Fellow and Alumni-led projects across 7 Teach For India cities.
• Pipeline cultivation: Find synergies with Teach For India’s Fellowship program and City Alumni teams and help cultivate the pipeline for InnovatED. You will support efforts at the city level to activate the pipeline and build formative competencies in Fellows running projects, who can eventually become strong candidates for an InnovatED application.
• Team learning: You must be a team player and contribute to the learning and development of your peers and colleagues on the Alumni Impact team at Teach For India.

Minimum Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• 1-3 years of relevant work experience in the field of entrepreneurship, innovation, or leadership
• A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in any field
• Excellent verbal, visual, and written communication skills
• Strong understanding of impact M&E and an orientation towards data-driven decision-making
• Strong community development and platform management skills
• Strong operational and event management skills
• A rudimentary understanding of innovation principles, practices, methods, and approaches – such as human-centered design, business model canvas, and theory of change
• Excellent relationship-building and influencing skills to foster networks and partnerships among organizations and stakeholders (at all levels of seniority)
• User centricity and a service mindset

Preferred Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• Personal experience of starting, managing, or being part of an incubator/accelerator or early-stage social enterprise
• Experience in supporting or working with early-stage entrepreneurs, including an insight into what it takes to start a new organization e.g. fundraising, team-building, sales, legal
• Knowledge of education and entrepreneurship in the Indian context
• The ability to think in terms of systems and platforms
• A Fellowship experience is an added benefit