Bridge International Academies Careers Officer, Finance 2020

Finance Nigeria, Yaba

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Description

Officer, Finance

Who We Are

Bridge partners with governments, donors, and parents to ensure that every child has access to an education that develops her full potential and creates the foundation for prosperity for the country. We are dedicated to supporting teachers, empowering school leaders, and ensuring every child has the learning support needed to master the national syllabus and have the confidence to succeed in a competitive world. Each of our project or country teams are supported through expertise and programming from additional offices around the world, combining world-leading expertise in core design areas with locally resident leadership and execution. We leverage experts, data, and technology in order to support and scale every aspect of quality education delivery. Bridge managed and supported schools are technology enabled and data driven to ensure accountability in the classroom for both teachers’ performance and children’s learning.

The Bridge model delivers significant learning outcomes at large scale by combining technology and customized learning materials. At Bridge, we believe innovation and technology can transform learning. Our model – which uses technology to deliver thoroughly researched and carefully designed daily lesson guides to teachers in our academies – is proven to increase learning outcomes for children. We are a solutions-driven, implementation-focused organization, using design principles to work in varied and often highly constrained contexts to ensure learning outcomes and positive development for children. Working in regional and national scales is important to us, as empowering entire generations of children with core knowledge, skills, and confidence is what builds the foundation for a peaceful and prosperous future for us all.

Our mission is to provide our pupils with a life-changing education and we believe that every child should have a right to world-class education regardless of her family’s income. Core to our approach is the conviction that every child can learn, as long as the school she attends is committed to her development and puts her needs to learn at the forefront of all decisions. We have seen teachers and children transform and excel in both government and private schools that we support and manage.

We invite you to join this incredible endeavor that is having world-changing impact across multiple continents. You will join a team of dedicated change-makers committed to ensuring that each decision we make keeps a child’s experience of learning as its guiding principle.

Nigeria

The education crisis is one that requires urgent, collective, and concrete action to surmount.  While Nigeria is said to have the largest number of out of school children in the world, the education crisis is not just about out of school children, but also about children who are in school and not learning. In Sub Saharan Africa, statistics say that 88% or almost 9 out of 10 children and adolescents will not be able to read proficiently by the time they are of age to complete primary and lower secondary Education. With Nigeria being the most populous country in Sub Saharan Africa, this crisis impacts us most.
Bridge started operations in Nigeria in 2015, opening its affordable private nursery and primary schools targeted at providing life changing education for families living in low-income areas of Lagos State in parts of Ikorodu, Alimosho, Badagry, Ojo, Epe, and other local government areas.  In 2017, Bridge further expanded its reach to the most marginalized and vulnerable communities by partnering with the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) and the State of Borno to set up a public school serving out-of-school children and children from internally displaced communities. In 2018, Bridge became technical partners to the Edo State government in its implementation of the Edo State Basic Education Sector Transformation program to reform its public primary and nursery school system.
Today, Bridge works with both communities and governments to ensure hundreds of thousands of children have access to either a well-run, high achieving affordable private or free public school so that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 of Quality Education becomes a reality for the millions of children in Nigeria quickly.  You will join a group of Nigerians taking concrete action to help address the education crisis in Nigeria and ensure a better future for the children of Nigeria.

Finance

The Finance Group at Bridge partners with country and global leadership to achieve financial sustainability of our operations and make our mission come true. We provide strategic partnership to global leadership on raising capital and actionable feedback on our financial performance. We are continually focused on judicious use of resources whether for each one of our territories or for the entire organisation.

Across our rapidly scaling multi-unit enterprise, we provide leadership to build a world-class financial infrastructure. This includes the design and development of financial systems, policies, procedures (taking into account current and fast growing high volume transactions, teams, numbers of geographically distributed business units) and provision of shared services for financial operations by a centralised team specialising in Accounting, Accounts Payable, Payroll, Treasury and Financial Planning & Analysis.]

About the Role

We are seeking a Finance Officer who will work closely with the Financial Director to refine how Bridge International Academies approaches financial budgeting, projections, and forecasting.  The Finance Officer will also help senior executives identify key performance indicators in the business, highlight how the Company can improve operational execution across all divisions, and prepare materials for the Board of Directors highlighting the Company’s strategic and financial direction.

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What You Will Do

•          Prepare and maintain financial analyses that forecast/project Bridge International Academies’ operational and financial performance

•          Work with department heads and senior executives to refine budgeting across the Company

•          Continuously work with department heads to identify and evaluate key performance indicators

•          Work with the Finance Department to ensure that historical/actual performance is correctly captured and in-sync with the Finance Associate’s work

•          Assist senior executives with preparing materials for the Board of Directors and investors

•          Think strategically and proactively about Bridge International Academies’ financial direction

What You Should Have

• At least two years of post-undergraduate, full time work experience in investment banking or corporate finance; should be used to highly rigorous, complex financial analysis
• Undergraduate degree from a top university with exemplary academic achievements; ideally in economics, business, accounting, and/or finance
• Very experienced working with Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint
• Experience working closely with a company to build financial and operating models at a deep level, particularly on a multi-country level
• Extraordinary attention to detail and highly driven, ambitious attitude towards work
• Strategic financial thinker with an eye for identifying metrics that matter for a business

You’re also

●        A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.

●        A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often fragile, sometimes volatile low-resource communities and with complex government systems. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.

●        A relentless advocate – The children we serve and teachers we empower never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their benefit, experience, and value.

●        A malleable learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.

●        A data-driven decision-maker – When making decisions, you don’t rely your intuition alone. You collect data, you analyze it and make decisions with clear justifications.

●        A curious investigator – You ask why a lot. You don’t just take what you see and accept it. You wonder why it is that way, and are aware that the world we see is created by human choices and actions – and it could be different. You wonder, and see the world as wonderful even when you want to change a part of it that is unjust.

 www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

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