Senior Consultant - Catalytic Financing Facility Design & Partnerships Enablement
Organizational Context
UNICEF operates in over 190 countries, dedicated to saving children's lives, defending their rights, and helping them fulfill their potential. We are committed, passionate, and proud of our work, viewing the promotion of children's rights not just as a job but as a calling. UNICEF offers diverse opportunities for professional and personal development, fostering a sense of purpose while serving children globally.
Job Purpose
This consultancy aims to provide senior technical, strategic, and partnership enablement support to UNICEF India. The primary goal is to design and operationalize the early phase of a catalytic financing facility. This involves developing and refining innovative financing models tailored to the Indian context, focusing on UNICEF's priority functions, particularly nutrition and multisectoral programming. The role will strengthen UNICEF India's capacity to identify, assess, and structure financing opportunities through market scanning, risk analysis, and partner mapping. It also requires engaging with government stakeholders to gauge readiness and feasible adoption pathways for staged financing approaches, and designing robust governance, risk management, and compliance frameworks to ensure credibility and scalability of the proposed models.
Responsibilities
The consultant will deliver outputs across two key workstreams: Nutrition Programming and Multisectoral Programming. For Nutrition Programming, responsibilities include designing the facility's approaches and staged instrument architecture, proposing financial mechanism options with pros and cons, and defining an opportunistic timeframe and organizational arrangements for operationalization. This involves translating designs into implementable operating models, including governance, decision gates, and criteria for progressing through different financing instruments (pooled grants, match, outcome-based financing, blended finance). For Multisectoral Programming, the consultant will build upon the nutrition framework to explore financing opportunities for social sectors, developing examples of financial models and their management mechanisms. This includes considering single options or staged approaches feasible within India's compliance and regulatory context, and ensuring proposed options align with both Indian and UNICEF's compliance, regulatory, and procedural requirements. The consultant will also produce high-quality, audience-specific knowledge products, briefs, and materials for internal and external stakeholders to support mobilization and positioning efforts.
Work Experience
A minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible professional experience in finance, innovative financing, public-private partnerships, or related fields, with a focus on developing countries. Experience in designing and implementing financing facilities or mechanisms is highly desirable. Experience working with UNICEF or other UN agencies is an asset.
Skills
Catalytic Financing Design, Innovative Financing Models, Partnership Development, Financial Structuring, Risk Assessment, Market Analysis, Stakeholder Engagement, Governance Design, Compliance and Regulatory Analysis, Knowledge Product Development, Strategic Planning, Project Management