Program Officer, Government Relations

**The Foundation**

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: that people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. By building a global and cultural workplace that supports greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — together with our employees and partners, we can help all people improve their lives from poverty and health to education. As an organization we offer full healthcare premiums coverage, generous paid time off, contribution to your retirement fund, several employee communities, and a commitment to embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into everything we do.

**The Team**

The mission of the Global Policy & Advocacy (GPA) division is to understand and shape the public policy debates affecting the foundation's work, build support for its major program and policy objectives, and develop partnerships and alliances that can advance the foundation's objectives nationally and globally. Because the foundation's resources alone are not enough to solve the challenges ahead, GPA also supports advocacy efforts to engage diverse partners and promote innovative solutions that advance our program goals. We work in close partnership with grantees, our colleagues in the Global Health, Global Development, Global Growth & Opportunity, U.S. and Gender Equality programs and Foundation Communications to build the environment in which all people have the opportunity to lead healthy and productive lives.

This role will be part of the Europe, Middle East and East Asia (EMEEA) team, which leads the foundation’s geographic presence in the largest donor countries outside North America and China, covering Europe (with a focus on UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Nordics, Netherlands and European Union institutions,) the Middle East (Arab league countries) and the Asia-Pacific region (Japan, South Korea and Australia). Our focus is on government donors and we are most active in Europe, whose governments represent over half of global foreign aid. However, the nature of our work means that we also frequently engage with non-government actors such as the media, civil society organizations (CSOs), think-tanks and academic institutions as we seek to make the case for sustained commitment to international development programs.

This position will both support our government relations, advocacy and policy work in Brussels and will be based at the foundation’s London office.

**Your Role**

The **Program Officer, Government Relations & Policy - EU** will support the advocacy, government relations and policy work towards the EU institutions and key processes that bring together Member States to advance the mission of the foundation particularly in the areas of, but not limited to, global health, agriculture, and gender. This position is responsible for providing policy research and analysis in support of our advocacy work and help in implementing our country specific advocacy strategies. They will report to and will work closely with the country lead for the EU and engage with political partners, grantees and other relevant external and internal contacts. The Program Officer must be able to communicate and interact effectively with individuals across all political parties and partners.

The EU is the fourth largest bilateral donor and plays a key role in policy and coordination across Member States. It is also among the top-three funders for global health research and development (R&D), and its competences are increasing on pandemic preparedness and cross-border health threats. It is not only a key donor in its own right, but it also plays a critical role in coordinating Member States in the areas of development and global health. The postholder will support the EU team to further the foundation’s engagement with the European institutions and support ongoing and prospective partnerships.

This position reports to the Senior Program Officer, EU Relations.

**What You'll Do**
- Support the Foundation’s heads of EU relations in drafting and implementing the respective policy and government relations strategies, by taking into consideration both external as well as internal strategic priorities.
- Help build and manage relationships with a broad range of political and technical partners and expand the foundation's broader relationship network with think tanks, philanthropy, academia, civil society, and the private sector.
- Lead and directly manage external support through consultants on specific policy research that guide our advocacy work, manage policy paper development and work with partners, such as CSOs and think tanks on advocating for policy issues regarding the foundation’s key priorities.
- Plan, prepare and support foundation leadership dialogue with relevant high-level government counterparts and oversee the follow-up implemen