Senior Manager, Strategic Program Evaluation

General Summary

The Senior Manager, Strategic Program Evaluation reports to the Deputy Executive Director and leads the Center’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategy, ensuring evidence is used to strengthen program design, guide resource allocation, and support continuous improvement across the center’s portfolio. The Senior Manager builds a culture of learning and accountability by supporting strategic planning, overseeing program evaluations, and helping decision-makers interpret data and evidence. The role manages all external evaluation work, including defining scopes of work for assessments of past training and learning activities, and designs and refines reporting processes for funders by identifying the data needed to track progress and measure program success.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

Architecting and Implementing the Evaluation Strategy & Framework
Design and lead the Center’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategy, including the design and execution of mixed-methods evaluation, ongoing performance monitoring, data collection, validation, analysis, and reporting.
Design, implement, and supervise program evaluations and monitoring systems that inform the Center’s monthly, quarterly and grant-cycle reporting and enhance the Center’s decision-making capabilities.
Develop and steward a multi-year evaluation agenda and monitoring framework that aligns with the Center’s strategic priorities, program portfolio, and funding requirements, and that supports continuous learning and adaptation over time.
Manage the end-to-end evaluation process (design, implementation, closeout, integration of lessons into program design and implementation) in coordination with program teams and Center leadership.
Work closely with program teams and partners to ensure the evaluation process is collaborative and aligned with program goals.
Design scopes of work and manage external evaluators, contractors, and consultants to ensure timely delivery of rigorous, high-quality outputs and actionable insights.
Maintain and refine the evaluation framework to ensure it remains relevant, practical, and effective.
Synthesizing Lessons and Solutions
Identify cross-program and cross-sector lessons to inform improvements, adaptations, and scaling of successful public innovation efforts.
Develop clear, executive-ready dashboards, visualizations, and learning products that translate complex data into accessible insights for senior leadership, program teams, and funding partners.
Analyze qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify patterns, insights, and opportunities for action.
Translate findings into practical, actionable recommendations.
Use key outcomes, metrics, and KPIs to recommend solutions aligned with the Center’s strategic goals.
Advise Center leadership by using evidence and available resources to recommend priorities, tradeoffs, and improvements that advance the Center’s mission and operational effectiveness.
Recommend and support improvements to systems, processes, and workflows that strengthen the Center’s ability to learn, adapt, and deliver high-quality, data-informed work.

Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree.
Seven years of related experience, including three years of monitoring and evaluation or data analytics experience.
Additional education may substitute for required experience, and additional related experience may substitute for required education beyond a high school diploma/graduation equivalent, to the extent permitted by the JHU equivalency formula.

Preferred Qualifications
Master’s Degree in a related field or equivalent combination of education and progressively responsible experience.
Demonstrated ability to bring both analytical rigor and creative problem-solving to the design and implementation of monitoring, evaluation, and learning products.
Proven experience planning, coordinating, and leading evaluation initiatives from concept through delivery, including defining objectives, timelines, deliverables, and resource needs.
Strong capability to align evaluation methods and performance measurement frameworks with organizational goals, define meaningful KPIs, and prioritize analyses that inform strategy, implementation, and continuous improvement.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to synthesize complex findings into clear and compelling reports and presentations for diverse stakeholders.
Strong facilitation, partnership-building, and influence skills, with the ability to build trust and drive adoption of evaluation insights across program teams, senior leadership, and external partners.
Demonstrated ability to analyze quantitative and qualitative data, identify patterns and implications, and translate evidence into actionable recommendations for organizational and program improvement.
Hands-on experience with business intelligence and data visualization tools such as Power BI, Tableau, and Airtable, as well as data platforms used to query, prepare, and validate data for performance measurement, trend analysis, and reporting.