Chief Operating Officer (Maternity Cover)

About the Job  Are you purpose-led and ready to embark on a journey to shape the future of sustainable cotton? Join us at Better Cotton as Senior Director – Impact & Development and lead a global team working to transform Better Cotton -deepening the impact of our global farm programs, building an impact marketplace, unlocking new funding for our programs, and evolving our US program.

The Challenge

We have made big commitments and want to use the Better Cotton platform to deliver more. Looking ahead to 2030, we are targeting reducing GHG emissions from cotton production by half, big cuts in synthetic pesticide use, improve soil health across our network, improve farm income and support women’s empowerment among farmers and farm workers.

We work across a diverse network of partners and growers around the world and needs and realities are highly variable.  We are looking to grow our funding base ten-fold to support farmers to take up sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices more rapidly. We are also developing an Impact Marketplace to pay farmers for the progress they are making in more sustainable outcomes.

We know that in order to use our big platform to go deeper we will need to keep evolving our system and way of working. There is much change afoot.   

As Senior Director of Impact and Development, you will help teams remain aligned – with each other and the wider organisation, stay outcome focused and meeting project milestones, and you will continuously look for opportunities to deepen and enhance the Better Cotton approach.   

Your role and responsibilities

We are seeking a motivated Senior Director – Impact & Development to join our team. In this role, you will lead a newly formed, impact and implementation focused function centred around bringing change and evolution to our programming in support of our 2030 targets to deepen impact at the farm level. You will report the CEO and oversee three departments, Programmes, Impact and Fundraising, covering a total of 80+ staff members. You will manage a high-performing senior team of Directors leading the following teams: 

 1. Programmes– The global team working on the implementation of our field-level programming.

• Collaborate and guide as needed by new Programmes Director, who will be working to reshape the deliver of the programmes function

• Coordinate Programmes to align with the Growth and Innovation Fund, Fundraising and Impact teams to ensure that our business as usual is well run but that we are also continuing to evolve our approach and delivery in line with 2030 strategy.

2. Impact – Enabling the development of the Impact Marketplace and projects to accelerate impact in focused projects

• Collaborate and guide as needed by new Impact Director and newly formed Impact team

• Oversee the progress of Gender, Climate, Regenerative Agriculture in piloting, practice adoption, and mainstreaming across our field programs

3. Fundraising and Development – Developing a culture of support in the FR team for the aspirations of technical teams, supporting FR to align vision with policy and helping open doors to new funders

• Collaborate with the fundraising team to ‘close’ existing leads • Bringing in-country field level and global impact team members in to develop outstanding plans for impact deepening programs

• Bringing in relevant technical team members to build credible plans for fundraising proposals and helping the fundraising team move into the mode of providing translation of the technical work into donor ready language and combinations

• Oversee the function to align FR vision with policy and help open doors to new funders. 

You will represent this Impact and Development teams in organisation wide contexts and will ensure your teams voice is heard in key areas such as the 2030 strategy refresh. You will ensure that all of your teams are working to plans that align with delivery of 2030 targets and champion approaches under development, such as the impact accelerators and impact marketplace. 

 Depending on qualifications and experience you may be invited to participate in the Better Cotton Executive Group – the organisations seniormost leadership group focusing on strategic management and alignment of the organisation as a whole. There are fortnightly EG meetings and EG members regularly support Better Cotton council discussions on their respective thematic areas.

As an organisation leadership role, this is perfect for someone passionate about enabling and equipping teams to excel and keeping a close eye on strategic needs. For your teams, you will need to support teams developing change projects to stayed aligned with other team across the organisation. 

We are looking for someone who has the following skills, knowledge, and experience: 

 Essential 

• Adept at working in a Global context and multicultural teams.

• Comfortable being a leader without knowing everything

• Committed to taking action and ensuring progress from the start

• Skilled in interpersonal dynamics and achieving desired outcomes.

• Excellence at understanding and listening to others, co-creating solutions and leading with vision and compassion

• Extensive experience in executive management roles and enthusiastic about driving significant achievements with teams

• Able to ‘hold the space’ for others

• Comfortable with uncertainty, and skilled in balancing and managing competing expectations

• Able to get up to speed quickly in new or evolving situations

 • Ability to provide guidance and leadership to people who know more than you on specific topics

• Track record delivering through teams 

Desirable 

• Background in sustainability, textiles, or agriculture

• Possessing a strong network to support fundraising for Better Cotton programming

• Track record of thought leadership

• Entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial leaning 

What we offer

• Competitive salary • Hybrid working – One to three days/week in the offices in central London, Delhi, or Lahore

• The opportunity to work from anywhere in the world for up to one month per year

• Flexible working, with core hours from 10 am to 4 pm local time

• Continuous learning and development

• Pension scheme

• 25 days paid annual leave, plus 8-9 Bank Holidays and a further 3 days off over Christmas

• Enhanced parental benefits

• A warm, positive working environment where everyone is valued

• The opportunity to make your mark and make a difference.