Anera Background
Since 1968, Anera has helped refugees and other vulnerable communities in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan live with purpose and hope.
Anera is a non-political, non-religious organization that works through locally rooted teams and partnerships to deliver emergency relief and long-term health, education, and economic development programs. Our staff serve in their communities, navigating complex political and operational realities to get support where it is needed most.
Job Overview
The Director of Programs is the senior program leader responsible for the overall performance, quality, coherence, and strategic direction of Anera’s program portfolio in Lebanon. Reporting to the Country Director, the DP ensures that programs are relevant, evidence-based, well-managed, donor-compliant, and delivered on time and to quality standards.
The Director of Programs is accountable for maintaining visibility over the full portfolio, ensuring that program implementation remains on track against agreed work plans and budgets, identifying risks and delays early, and ensuring that management attention is directed where needed. The DP leads and supervises Program Managers, MEAL, Communications, Program Quality/Technical Coordination functions, and other relevant program staff as defined in the Lebanon country structure, ensuring alignment, coordination, and accountability across the portfolio.
The DP is a key member of the Country Senior Management Team and works closely with the Country Director, Director of Operations, Finance, Business Development, MEAL, and field teams to ensure strong program delivery and strategic growth in both regular and emergency contexts.
Essential Functions
1. Program Leadership and Portfolio Oversight
- Provide overall leadership and oversight for Anera’s program portfolio in Lebanon, ensuring quality, relevance, accountability, and alignment with Anera’s mission and country priorities.
- Maintain regular visibility over all active projects and interventions across sectors and geographic areas.
- Track progress against approved workplans, timelines, targets, and budgets, and ensure that implementation remains on track.
- Identify delays, risks, bottlenecks, and underperformance early, and lead corrective action in coordination with relevant teams.
- Ensure that the Country Director is regularly and proactively informed of portfolio status, major developments, key risks, and decisions requiring management attention.
- Lead regular internal program review processes to assess progress, implementation challenges, and required course correction.
- Chair regular portfolio review meetings to monitor program progress, budget utilization, implementation risks, delays, partner performance, compliance concerns, and corrective actions, ensuring timely follow-up and accountability across the portfolio .
- Ensure coherence and alignment across sectors, field teams, and implementing modalities.
2. Strategic Direction and Program Quality
- Lead the program team in translating Anera’s regional strategy and country priorities into a clear, actionable, and realistic program portfolio.
- Ensure that programs are community-informed, contextually relevant, conflict-sensitive, and based on sound technical approaches.
- Ensure that all programs are implemented in accordance with Anera's safeguarding standards, Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) requirements, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) commitments, protection principles, and Do No Harm approaches, promoting safe, inclusive, and accountable programming.
- Promote quality programming by ensuring interventions are well designed, feasible, evidence-based, and responsive to changing context.
- Ensure that humanitarian, stabilization, and development interventions are strategically aligned and, where relevant, appropriately sequenced.
- Stay informed on political, humanitarian, sectoral, and donor trends affecting the Lebanon portfolio, and provide strategic analysis and recommendations to the Country Director and SMT.
- Promote integration, learning, and adaptation across programs and sectors.
3. Emergency Leadership and Adaptive Management
- Provide program leadership during emergencies and periods of rapid change, ensuring timely reprioritization, adaptation, and continuity of implementation.
- Support the design, oversight, and adaptation of emergency interventions in volatile and access-constrained contexts.
- Ensure the program team remains responsive to emerging needs, changing displacement patterns, security developments, and operational constraints.
- Work with field, operations, and support teams to ensure emergency programming is realistic, timely, and well coordinated.
- Ensure that emergency and regular portfolio oversight are both maintained, with clear distinction and discipline in reporting and management.
4. Program Design, Business Development, and Growth
- Work closely with Business Development and relevant technical teams to identify strategic funding opportunities aligned with Anera’s priorities and comparative advantage.
- Lead or contribute to the programmatic design of proposals, ensuring they are technically strong, contextually grounded, operationally feasible, and competitive.
- Ensure that proposals are based on evidence, realistic assumptions, clear implementation logic, and sound staffing and delivery models.
- Review and strengthen concept notes, proposals, and donor-facing program materials to ensure quality and consistency.
- Support the development of innovative and responsive programming that aligns with donor priorities without compromising relevance or feasibility.
- Contribute to sector and donor intelligence, including donor mapping, needs analysis, and positioning discussions relevant to program growth.
5. Donor, Partner, and Stakeholder Engagement
- Represent Anera in relevant donor, partner, coordination, and stakeholder meetings as delegated by the Country Director.
- Build and maintain constructive relationships with key programmatic stakeholders, including local partners, technical actors, coordination bodies, and relevant institutional counterparts.
- Support strategic partner engagement and ensure that program relationships are managed in a professional, accountable, and forward-looking manner.
- Oversee partner performance management, ensuring that partners meet agreed programmatic, compliance, quality, and reporting standards, and that identified gaps are addressed through timely corrective actions and capacity-strengthening efforts.
- Contribute to donor confidence through strong program oversight, credible reporting, and timely follow-up on commitments.
6. Team Leadership, Supervision, and Performance Management
- Directly supervise Program Managers, MEAL, Communications, Program Quality/Technical Coordination staff, and other direct reports as defined by the Lebanon country structure.
- Hold regular one-on-one meetings with direct reports and ensure effective management follow-up.
- Set clear expectations, monitor staff performance, provide regular feedback, and address underperformance in a timely manner.
- Support managers to lead their teams effectively, solve problems, and maintain delivery under pressure.
- Build a culture of accountability, collaboration, learning, and strong communication across the program function.
- Promote staff development, succession planning, and the growth of national leadership within the team.
- Foster an inclusive, respectful, and high-performing work environment.
7. Monitoring, Reporting, and Learning
- Ensure that all programs have clear results frameworks, measurable indicators, and practical monitoring arrangements.
- Work closely with MEAL staff to ensure that program evidence, monitoring findings, and lessons learned are used to improve program quality and decision-making.
- Ensure that findings and recommendations from monitoring activities, evaluations, audits, assessments, and partner reviews are translated into actionable improvement plans, tracked to completion, and integrated into program management and decision-making.
- Ensure timely preparation and review of high-quality donor reports and internal program updates.
- Promote disciplined program reporting across the portfolio, including regular status updates on progress, risks, delays, and management actions.
- Ensure reflection and learning processes are built into program implementation, including review of challenges, performance, and adaptation needs.
8. Cross-Functional Coordination
- Work closely with the Director of Operations, Finance, Procurement, HR, and other support functions to ensure that implementation is realistic, coordinated, and well supported.
- Ensure that program priorities are clearly communicated to field and support teams and that cross-functional issues are addressed in a timely way.
- Help resolve tensions between program urgency, operational feasibility, compliance, and available resources.
- Support a strong working relationship between programs and support functions that enables delivery without weakening accountability.
9. Other Duties
- Perform other responsibilities as assigned by the Country Director to support country priorities, emergency response, and organizational effectiveness.
Qualifications
Academic Qualifications
- Master’s degree in International Development, Public Policy, Humanitarian Action, Emergency Management, Public Health, Social Sciences, or another relevant field.
- A bachelor’s degree with extensive relevant experience may be considered in lieu of a master’s degree.
Experience and Skills
- At least 10 years of progressively responsible experience in program leadership within humanitarian and/or development settings.
- Significant experience managing complex, multi-sectoral portfolios in conflict-affected or fragile environments.
- Proven experience managing managers and multi-site teams.
- Strong experience in program oversight, implementation follow-up, and performance management.
- Demonstrated ability to turn strategy into operational delivery and to maintain visibility across a broad portfolio.
- Proven experience in proposal design, donor engagement, and program growth.
- Strong understanding of program quality, donor compliance, reporting, and MEAL.
- Experience working effectively during emergencies and rapid context shifts, including adaptive management in volatile environments.
- Strong judgment, analytical skills, and the ability to identify risks, prioritize issues, and develop practical solutions.
- Excellent leadership, communication, coordination, and stakeholder engagement skills.
- Strong interpersonal skills and ability to lead through influence, clarity, and accountability.
- Good understanding of the political, humanitarian, and operational context in Lebanon and the broader Middle East.
- Strong written and spoken English and Arabic required.
Core Competencies
- Strategic leadership
- Portfolio management
- Program quality and adaptive management
- Team leadership and accountability
- Proposal design and donor positioning
- Cross-functional coordination
- Stakeholder engagement and representation
- Evidence-based decision-making
- Problem-solving under pressure
- Communication and management discipline
Anera Values
We are inspired: We energize, engage, and motivate others to forge the best outcomes for the diverse communities we serve.
We are people-centric: We are respectful and empathetic. We believe each person embodies promise and has the power to shape the lives of their community and world.
We are collaborative: Teamwork and collaborative action are at the heart of how we work and deliver results.
We are versatile: In a region burdened by obstacles, we make the right connections to find a way and bring can-do, innovative approaches to everything we do.
We are impactful: We make a lasting difference in the lives of those we serve by delivering impactful solutions at the local community level.
We are accountable: Our words, actions, and results stay true to our mission and values.
