This is a senior, high-impact position leading a flagship “Investing for Future Generations” Lab, focused on transforming how capital markets understand and respond to children’s lives and outcomes.
- Package: The Institute Senior Manager Band is £56k-65k. Salary is contingent on experience + 30 days paid holiday per annum (pro rata salary and annual leave), and Pension Scheme with 10% employer contribution
- Hours: 4-5 days per week
- Start date: As soon as available
- Duration: 12-month fixed-term contract
The role
This is a senior, high-impact role leading the Institute’s new Investing for Future Generations Lab — a flagship, collective impact programme designed to reshape how capital markets account for children and future generations.
Children make up nearly a third of the global population, yet remain largely invisible within investment decision-making. Financial markets profoundly shape children’s lives — through housing, food systems, work, and digital environments — but these impacts are rarely recognised or systematically addressed. This programme exists to change that.
Building on four market leading projects focused on positive outcomes for children, you will power the next chapter of our work: you will lead a strategy to mobilise capital and influence market practice so that children’s outcomes are understood as a material financial consideration, not just a moral concern. This means building the conditions for durable market change: shared frameworks, credible evidence, aligned stakeholders, and practical pathways for investors to act.
You will enable the Institute to act as a backbone organisation, coordinating and aligning a diverse set of partners — including investors, foundations, policymakers and delivery experts — to move beyond fragmented efforts toward a coherent, system-level shift in how capital is allocated and stewarded.
You will lead influence, coordination and coalition building: shaping narratives, aligning actors, and driving a strategy that brings together diverse assets and efforts to become more than the sum of their parts.
You will hold significant responsibility for both the Lab’s strategic direction and operational delivery, including developing the programme, securing and managing additional funding and resourcing, overseeing substantial budgets, and managing key external partnerships. You will play a key role in shaping programme strategy and a collective impact approach, aligning it with broader organisational goals, and ensuring successful outcomes that have a high organisational impact.
The Senior Programme Manager will also sit on the Institute Senior Management Team, contributing to and leading on strategic organisational decisions.
Key Responsibilities
As Senior Programme Manager, you will lead the Investing for Future Generations Lab by taking responsibility for the following areas:
1. Set and drive a market-shaping strategy
You will create and own a clear, ambitious strategy that builds the conditions for systemic change and shifts how capital markets understand and respond to children’s outcomes.
- Lead the development and evolution of the Lab’s theory of change, strategy and multi-year roadmap – ensuring the programme has a clear goal, theory of change, delivery roadmap, milestones, budget and evaluation approach.
- Identify where the programme can create the greatest leverage — including across asset classes, investor behaviour, and policy alignment — and make strategic trade-offs.
- Translate ambition into a clear set of priorities, workstreams and milestones, with defined success criteria.
- Ensure effective governance, including working with an established Steering Committee for the programme.
- Manage programme budgets, risks, reporting requirements and resourcing.
- Identify opportunities for strategic alignment with the Institute’s wider Challenge Labs and programme areas, including place-based impact investing and just transition.
2. Act as a backbone for a collective impact coalition
You will build and enable a coordinated, high-functioning coalition of partners working towards shared goals and reinforcing each other’s activity.
- Convene and coordinate a cross-sector group of investors, funders, policymakers and experts, representing the programme with credibility, authority and confidence.
- Cement the Institute’s role as a backbone organisation, ensuring:
- a shared agenda and theory of change
- alignment around common measures of progress
- continuous communication across partners
- coordination of mutually reinforcing activities
- Build and maintain strong relationships with domestic and global stakeholders across investment, philanthropy, government, civil society, early childhood development and international organisations.
- Ensure the programme maintains momentum, coherence and clarity across a diverse set of actors and interests.
- Represent the Institute at meetings, roundtables, working groups and external forums, including speaking at events and chairing or moderating discussions.
- Work closely with communications and events colleagues to maximise the reach, clarity and influence of the Lab’s outputs and activities.
3. Translate insight into practical market interventions
You will deliver materials that enable investor action; creating credible, practical tools and a growing evidence base.
- Oversee delivery of a portfolio of outputs, including:
- investor guidance and frameworks
- case studies and market insights
- policy papers and briefings
- events, roundtables and convenings
- Build and curate a credible evidence base, drawing on research, investor engagement and emerging practice.
- Ensure outputs are designed to influence real-world decisions — across capital allocation, stewardship and engagement.
- Work closely with communications colleagues to ensure outputs are visible, accessible and widely used.
4. Drive policy influence, partnerships and business development
You will support the creation of an ecosystem that is enabling investment flows to positive outcomes for children.
- Identify and develop strategic partnerships and coalition allies that strengthen the Lab’s reach, delivery and influence.
- Lead the Lab’s contribution to strengthening the policy environment for investment that supports positive outcomes for children.
- Play a leading role in fundraising and business development for the Lab, working closely with the Co-CEOs and fundraising colleagues.
- Build and steward relationships with prospective and existing funders and partners, including foundations, financial services firms and public sector funders.
5. Contribute to organisational leadership
You will be part of and contribute to a high-performing, ambitious organisation delivering system-level impact.
- As a member of the Senior Management Team, contribute to organisational strategy and lead on assigned strategic organisational decisions.
- Provide effective line management to direct reports, supporting delivery, growth and career development.
- Set clear expectations, support effective collaboration and ensure resources are used efficiently to deliver strong outcomes.
- Foster a culture of high performance, inclusion, learning, accountability and care.
- Work collaboratively across the Institute, ensuring the Lab benefits from and contributes to wider Challenge Labs, Field Building, policy and communications work.
Person Profile
We are looking for a senior leader who can operate at the intersection of strategy, influence, delivery and capital markets, and who is motivated by the opportunity to drive systemic change for children.
We are open to candidates from a range of professional backgrounds. You do not need to be a technical expert in impact investing, but you do need to be comfortable operating in a range of financial and policy environments and be passionate about bringing your skill set to creating better futures for children.
The capabilities we are looking for:
1. Strategic leadership and system thinking
- Proven ability to shape and deliver ambitious strategies in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
- Strong judgement in identifying where to focus for maximum leverage and impact.
- Experience navigating uncertainty, making trade-offs and translating strategy into action.
- Experience contributing to organisational strategy development, decision-making and the identification of new opportunities for impact.
2. Pace, Prioritisation and relationship building skills
- Proven problem-solving, multitasking and time-management skills, with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment, keep multiple projects and objectives on track, and respond flexibly to changing priorities.
- Experience working with partners operating in different geographies and ability to build coalitions across organisations.
- Excellent interpersonal and relationship-building skills with internal and external stakeholders, including at the most senior levels.
3. Communication, convening and influence
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including confidence speaking in public, leading and chairing meetings, and producing high-quality written outputs for senior audiences.
- Experience influencing and engaging stakeholders across sectors.
- Strong convening and facilitation skills, with the ability to align diverse actors around shared goals.
4. Understanding of capital markets and investment context
- Strong knowledge / experience of the functioning of capital markets and the different actors within them, with the ability to quickly grasp new and complex areas of work in finance, impact investing and related policy fields.
- Experience translating complex policy, investment or social impact issues into clear, practical outputs such as reports, guidance, briefings, events or stakeholder engagement materials.
- Experience working within or closely with investment institutions, asset owners, asset managers or related actors.
5. Conviction and ambition
- A commitment to the belief that finance can be a force for positive change in society.
- Ambitious to encourage change in the investment industry, so that children become visible in capital markets activity.
Desirable:
The following are not essential requirements. Please consider applying even if you do not meet all of them.
- Experience working on children’s outcomes, early years, education or related policy areas
- Experience delivering or contributing to collective impact or cross-sector programmes
- Experience working internationally or across multiple geographies
- Experience translating complex policy or investment issues into practical outputs (e.g. reports, frameworks, events)
About the Impact Investing Institute
The Impact Investing Institute is an independent non-profit organisation working to transform capital markets, so they support a fairer, greener, more resilient future. Through our Challenge Labs, we come up with practical ways to help private capital address societal challenges such as improving children’s lives, left-behind neighbourhoods, and a fair transition to net zero. Via our Field Building, we advance the impact investing field through guides, training, networks and communities of practice. We also engage and seek to influence policymakers and regulators to create an enabling environment where impact investing can thrive, both in the UK and globally.
We are a small and agile team with bold ambitions and a big impact. We achieve our impact through collaboration and co-creation: we work closely as a team and with secondees, volunteers, board members, and a network of external stakeholders across financial services, social investment, businesses, government and regulators.
Our values
The Impact Investing Institute’s organisational values are fundamental to our identity and success. They serve three critical purposes:
- Guiding our long-term strategy and decision-making processes
- Shaping our organisational and team culture: how we work internally and with others
- Supporting our mission to transform capital markets for a fairer, greener, more resilient future
Collaborative: With regards to our culture and team dynamics, we pride ourselves on being warm, collaborative, and compassionate. Being collaborative is essential because it:
- Creates a supportive environment where team members feel valued and heard
- Enables everyone to perform at their best
- Fosters an inclusive workplace culture that drives innovation and success
- Is key to achieving our mission: as a market builder and small organisation, we work with others to drive change
We collaborate with diverse teams both within and outside the organisation to leverage a broad range of perspectives, ensuring we build out an inclusive and effective organisation that in turn accelerates an inclusive effective impact investing market.
Ambitious: Our sense of drive and achievement is underscored by being bold and ambitious, which is reflected in our:
- Determination to create lasting change
- Commitment to break new ground to grow the market, our enterprising approach to challenges, our agile and imaginative tackling of difficult problems
- Commercial mindset, focus on financial sustainability and the growth of an efficient and dynamic organisation
- Willingness to pursue bold goals in the impact investing space, but also in our wider work around changing investment narratives and the system itself
This ambitious mindset is crucial for driving the systemic changes needed in capital markets and the broader financial sector.
Independence: Our strategic mindset and purpose are shaped by our commitment to being independent, forward-thinking, and authentic, which is vital because it:
- Ensures we maintain our integrity and credibility
- Allows us to adapt to future challenges while staying true to our purpose
- Strengthens our ability to act as a bridge between different capital market actors and work towards transforming capital markets
We are committed to being an inclusive organisation and to building a team with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. We encourage applications from people who are under-represented in finance and policy, including (but not limited to) people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, people with long-term health conditions and disabilities, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and those with non-linear career paths.
We welcome applications from people with disabilities and long-term health conditions and are happy to discuss reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. We also support flexible working and encourage applicants to raise any flexibility needs.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in applications
We recognise that AI tools are part of many people’s working lives and may be used in preparing applications. That said, applications are assessed on the basis of your personal experience, judgement and examples. We score for specificity and authenticity; responses that appear generic or indistinguishable from standard AI-generated content.