Seeking a solutions-driven team player to support global movement building on climate and environmental justice.

About the Position:

In a world where billions of people live outside the protection of the law, Namati is dedicated to putting the law in people’s hands. We’re building a global movement of grassroots advocates who work alongside communities to help them protect their land, safeguard their environment, and shape the decisions that govern their lives.

Namati’s Global Land, Environment, and Climate (LEC) team is responsible for ensuring an integrated, organization-wide strategy on land, environmental, and climate justice. We help build out new frontiers in our direct program work and connect lessons from Namati’s experimentation across our core countries to peer learning in the Grassroots Justice Network. We work closely with Namati program teams in 5 countries to support and strengthen their work. We also lead the Carbon Justice campaign supporting grassroots advocates to advance key principles for protecting community rights as carbon markets expand across the globe.

The Senior Program Associate will play a central role in supporting the team’s work across several key areas. This position will help execute projects; drive core operational processes for budgeting, expense tracking, and contracting external vendors; and provide cross-cutting support on M&E and publications. By strengthening coordination and execution across the team, the Senior Program Associate will help us drive forward ambitious goals across Namati’s land, environment, and climate portfolio.

We seek a teammate who genuinely enjoys bringing both precision and creative thinking to executing projects for a fast-paced team. You understand that “behind-the-scenes'' work is critical to the achievement of any important mission. Our ideal candidate is an impeccably organized and confident team player. They possess exemplary project management and communication skills, outstanding attention to detail, the drive to excel in all responsibilities, and willingness to contribute to a range of different activities.

This role offers significant opportunity for learning and growth, with responsibilities that can expand over time in alignment with the candidate’s strengths, interests, and professional goals.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Program Support
- Manage coordination and logistics for virtual and in-person convenings, including team retreats, learning exchanges, and global conferences (e.g., COP, London Climate Week).
- Own scheduling and cross-team coordination, proactively managing team calendars and follow ups on action items.
- Support online course production for the Grassroots Justice Network Academy (GJNA) by overseeing translation workflows, liaising with video editors, and tracking deliverables to ensure timely completion.
- Collect M&E data on member engagement to support ongoing learning about our impact and effective strategies
- Monitor media sources and databases for relevant updates and to provide light research support for programmatic focus areas
- Maintain clear, structured meeting notes capturing key decisions, and action items to ensure clarity across the team.

Program Finance and Operations
- Manage team expenses, including requests for expense approval, managing invoices, and tracking payments.
- Support the drafting of consultant and vendor contracts with guidance from the Senior Operations Manager and the Global Finance team.
- Oversee expense tracking and reporting for the Managing Director, ensuring accuracy and timely submission.
- Support budget management by maintaining up-to-date tracking tools and monitoring expenditures against approved budget.

Publications and External Deliverables
- Provide line-by-line proofreading of funding proposals, donor reports, and program publications to ensure clarity, consistency, and alignment with approved language and messaging.
- Support proposal development processes by tracking deadlines and coordinating input from multiple team members.

Here’s what you might have tackled in the past week:

Helped coordinate with a video editor to ensure learning videos for a new online course are produced on time for our launch date.
Took detailed meeting notes during a team planning call for the carbon justice campaign and circulated clear action items to ensure follow-through across the team.
Coordinated and managed logistics for a global convening in Sierra Leone, including reviewing participant visa and flight procurement status and booking venues.
Organized a virtual meeting of 20+ environmental justice advocates by sharing materials in advance, arranging interpretation, managing the Zoom chat during the meeting, and sharing notes and the recording in a follow-up email.
Updated tracker for budgets and expenses (consultants, travel, etc.) and prepared clear spending updates for the Senior Operations Manager and Managing Director.
Organized data on completion rates and quiz scores for our online Carbon Justice 101 course and shared statistics with the team to improve engagement.

About You

Track record of excellence: You bring a minimum of three years of professional experience supporting program implementation or operations. You are trusted across your team to deliver accurate, high-quality work on time and take pride in strong follow-through.
A talent for organization and detail: You manage multiple priorities and multi-step processes with confidence and clarity. You anticipate challenges, exercise sound judgment, and problem solve proactively when needed. You’re known for producing high quality content on deadline.
Enthusiasm for operational excellence: You genuinely enjoy, and have demonstrable experience (at least one year) directly supporting a small team of people. You think in terms of systems and create solutions to sticky problems. Previous experience working on a program or operations team at a non-profit is a plus.
Strong written and verbal communication skills: You communicate clearly and concisely. When you send an email, it is free of typos or grammatical errors, and when you proofread content you catch others’ errors. You know how to get your ideas across without multiple follow-ups.
Ease with technology: You learn new tools quickly and routinely use technology to streamline work. Experience with Google Workspace, Excel/Google Sheets, Canva, WordPress, or similar platforms is preferred.
Collaborative and team-oriented: You write and speak with clarity and professionalism, tailoring communication to diverse audiences. You thrive in cross-cultural, cross-time-zone collaboration and are receptive to feedback and continuous growth in service of a global land and environmental justice mission.

Location

This position will be based in either Nairobi, Kenya, or in Mexico. Please note, you must already be legally authorized to work in one of these locations to be considered; Namati cannot sponsor visas for this position.

If this person is based in Nairobi, the position will follow Namati’s hybrid office policy, which calls for staff to report to the office 2-3 days per week.

The successful candidate will be expected to work non-standard hours occasionally to accommodate the various time zones of Namati’s teams.

Compensation Package

Namati's staff position bands range from 1 (entry level/assistant) to 9 (managing director). This position will be at band 3.

We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate. We work to communicate transparently with candidates (including talking about compensation very early in the process; for this position, we will send the prospective offer range for the candidate’s location when reaching out to request a screening interview). Throughout the hiring process we will seek to understand your specific skills, experience, and abilities as they will fit into our team and our job levels. We will finalize pay and responsibilities based on the qualifications, experience, and country location of the person joining.

We also offer excellent benefits: while the exact terms vary somewhat based on location, they always include health coverage, generous paid time off, retirement or old-age plan contributions, sick leave, and parental leave. All staff also have access to funds for professional development opportunities.

To Apply

Please complete our online application form. Applications are due by Thursday, April 9; no applications will be accepted after this date.

No phone calls, please. Namati is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Namati

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Senior Program Associate, Global Land, Environment, and Climate (LEC)