Program Manager (Urban)

Position: Program Manager – Urban Initiative

Location: Delhi

An initiative supported by The Convergence Foundation

About URBAN Project

India is urbanising rapidly, and its cities are where the country's economic future will be decided. Services already form the largest part of the Indian economy, and well-functioning cities are essential to sustaining services-led growth and creating jobs at scale. Yet urbanisation in India has often been unplanned and under-resourced, leaving cities struggling with weak planning, a difficult business environment, fragmented governance, and chronic under-financing. Getting urbanisation right – rapid yet sustainable – is one of the highest-leverage opportunities for India's economic transformation.

The Urban Initiative is supported by The Convergence Foundation, the Urban Initiative is being established to help India build the policy ecosystem needed to drive economic growth through rapid and sustainable urbanisation. It will work systemically—developing policy perspectives and partnering with the government to advance reform—rather than engaging in on-ground implementation. Its work will be organised around four interconnected pillars:

• Regional economic and spatial planning: Creating regional economic plans that feed into better, more growth-oriented master plans for cities and their surrounding regions.
• Ease of doing business: Enabling more sensible development control norms and regulations that make it easier to build, invest and do business in cities.
• Governance: Strengthening how cities are managed, including the devolution of power to empowered, accountable city governments.
• Financing: Ensuring cities are adequately funded and well managed – through better allocation of public money, raising local resources, and involving the private sector through PPP and other models.

Across each pillar, the initiative will build a strong policy perspective, drawing on best practices from better-run Indian cities as well as relevant global examples. It will work closely with the central government – including NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) – to drive policy change at the national level, and with state and city governments where there is genuine interest and appetite for reform. The initiative will remain a small, high-quality team focused on ideas, influence and partnerships rather than implementation.

Position Summary

The Economic growth team works with internal and external stakeholders on cross functional projects. This role sits within the team's Urban Development initiative, which explores emerging issues and whitespaces in the urban development policy ecosystem. The Program Manager (PM) should have strong problem-solving skills, secondary research capabilities and analytical prowess. In addition, as well as excellent oral & written communication skills. The ideal candidate is a self-starter with a bias towards action and the ability to work with ambiguous requirements. The PM will have a steep learning curve and would be expected to hit the ground running on live projects with Government institutions.

Areas of Work:

The Program Manager will:

• Work with Economic Growth team and leadership to identify and scope priority areas in the urban development policy ecosystem, with a focus on ease of doing business in cities, urban finance, and city planning
• Engage in dipstick secondary research to diagnose binding constraints in issue areas and develop initial hypotheses around opportunities for impact (e.g. which regulatory constraints, if solved for, can improve ease of doing business in a city)
• Develop evidence-based benchmarking frameworks to compare cities on regulatory performance and identify opportunities to streamline approvals, improve governance, and accelerate urban economic growth
• Engage with policymakers, urban practitioners, and other ecosystem stakeholders to validate findings, refine priorities, and build partnerships
• Oversee the creation of knowledge material across priority areas by identifying potential partners, developing terms of reference and managing projects to their completion
• Provide continued program/grant support to organisations, programs or public goods that might stem as a result of the scoping exercise

Required Qualifications, Skills and Abilities

• Undergraduate or masters degrees from top tier institutions. While there is no preference for a particular major or specialisation, prior experience in urban development or related sectors will be preferred
• Up to 4 years of work experience in a consulting or challenging/ high growth environment
• Excellent analytical, critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Solid planning and organisational skills with high attention to detail, accuracy, protocol and deadline
• Excellent writing ability that is clear, concise and analytic in style
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and stakeholder-facing skills including solid presentation and facilitation skills
• High level of flexibility and responsiveness with the ability to shift priorities quickly and as organisational demands require
• Ability to do research and distil important concepts in a structured, concise, yet comprehensive manner
• Operating style suited to working in a small-organisation setting, where teamwork and resourcefulness are highly valued

Compensation

Remuneration will be competitive with Indian philanthropy pay scales and will depend upon the candidate's experience

Location

New Delhi, India