Business Portfolio Manager - North Lebanon - ARE Activty

BACKGROUND

The Lebanon Agriculture and Rural Empowerment (ARE) activity, funded by USAID and implemented by Chemonics International, has a three-year base period, two Option Years, and One Increased Quantity Option. Both option years have been activated, bringing the project period to five years, and the IQO has been exercised in order to enable the incremental funding for scale-up interventions in support of both of ARE’s expected results (objectives). ARE supports Lebanese rural and peri-urban communities to obtain technical and financial resources in order to facilitate increased productivity, sales, and exports, improved business income, while also ensuring livelihood sustainability. To support this purpose, ARE will increase jobs; improve incomes; improve female participation and employment opportunities; increase domestic and export sales; increase private sector investment; improve access to finance; link value chain actors to domestic and international markets; and improve production through improved practices, technology, increased volume, and/or decreased cost. ARE supports two key expected results (objectives), each with their own intermediate result (IR):

1. Increased domestic and export sales at both firm and farm levels (Result 1)
   1. Increased enterprise competitiveness (IR 1.1)
2. Livelihoods improved, especially in rural areas and for women (Result 2)
   1. Improved productivity of MSMEs, including farmers (IR 2.1)

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Business Portfolio Manager will serve as a key member of the Private Sector Engagement Team, under the direct management and supervision of the Regional Private Sector Engagement Director (RPSE Director). The Business Portfolio Manager will be responsible for identifying, evaluating, and designing interventions for private sector engagement through thoughtful and rapid implementation of grant and technical assistance opportunities across all technical priority areas of the ARE project. Within their area of responsibility, the Manager will work with local communities and partners to identify champion firms and value chain actors and intermediaries to support the successful implementation of ARE’s technical areas. The Business Portfolio Manager will coordinate closely with their assigned Grants Manager and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Team to continually assess opportunities for interventions and plan tasks in line with project outputs and overall objectives.

DETAILED RESPONSIBILITIES

• Oversees the engagement with private sector entities in the assigned region, including identifying and linking business opportunities with emerging and established agricultural and potentially non-agricultural activities.
• Liaises with local communities, project stakeholders and partners to identify and assess private sector firms and institutions throughout the agricultural sector in Lebanon, and reports findings to the RPSE Director to inform the intervention or partnership strategy
• Lead the evaluation and diagnosis of client firms to determine the appropriate support mechanisms and partnership opportunities;
• In partnership with the RPSE Director, lead the development of work plans for champion firms that incorporate assistance to increase incomes, grow companies to create more jobs, and increase overall sales;
• In collaboration with the assigned Grants Manager, designs grants or technical assistance interventions with identified and selected private sector entities;
• Contributes to the design and implementation of private sector interventions, grants, and technical assistance to enable increased sales and export potential, job creation, and increased incomes for private sector entities and selected beneficiaries;
• Serve as primary point of contact within the ARE project for medium and small enterprises supported through the ARE project to provide problem-solving, technical assistance and direct support to companies and beneficiaries;
• Identify market opportunities to link with potential client firms to achieve objectives associated with increase sales and exports for supported firms;
• Coordinate with other team members, including communications team, data collection assistants, grants manager, and deputy chief of party to identify areas for technical assistance, achieve project objectives, and other tasks as required;
• Other duties as assigned by the RPSE Director.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in business, marketing, or another relevant field;
• Minimum of five years of relevant experience in private sector engagement and firm-level; assistance required, experience working with private sector entities in the agricultural sector preferred;
• Previous experience working with micro, small and medium sized enterprises in region of focus, preferably in the agriculture and export sales sector;
• Familiarity with ARE target locations, and ability to travel frequently to conduct site visits with selected companies;
• Direct experience working at management level in a private sector agricultural company highly preferred;
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work closely within a team;
• Fluency in Arabic and advanced proficiency English.

LOCATION OF ASSIGNMENT

The Business Portfolio Manager-Northern Lebanon will be based in North with extensive travel within their assigned region expected on a regular basis and to Beirut (minimum once a week)

REPORTING

The Business Portfolio Manager will report to the RPSE Director.