Project Manager & Senior School Transformation Coach

About nafda

nafda  is a grassroots movement working alongside schools and communities to strengthen Engaged Citizenship, Good Governance, and Social Justice across Lebanon.

 

nafda was born from a simple belief: those closest to the challenges are often closest to the solutions. Across Lebanon, schools are navigating increasingly complex realities, yet they remain among the few spaces that continue to bring people together across communities and generations.

 

Rather than delivering stand-alone programs, nafda invests in the people, relationships, and leadership that enable schools to drive change from within. By connecting principals, educators, students, and communities, we help schools identify local priorities, build leadership, foster collaboration, and create opportunities for young people to contribute meaningfully to their communities.

 

Our work is brought to life through four interconnected pathways:

 

1. Values-Based Citizenship & Civic Learning

Creating opportunities for students and educators to practice citizenship, dialogue, ethical leadership, coexistence, and collective responsibility.

1. Youth Agency & Community Action

Creating opportunities for young people to identify challenges, design solutions, and lead initiatives that create positive change within their schools and surrounding communities.

1. Leadership & School Improvement

Supporting principals and educators to strengthen school culture, develop collaborative leadership, and lead school improvement efforts that respond to the needs of their communities.

1. Networks, Advocacy & Systems Influence

Connecting schools through peer learning, collaboration, and advocacy to strengthen educational leadership and contribute grassroots insights to broader conversations around education, community development and social cohesion.

Role purpose

The Project Manager & Senior School Transformation Coach is responsible for translating nafda's approved strategies, project designs and Theory of Change into disciplined implementation and high-quality support to schools. The role owns the operational bridge between design and results: building executable plans, coordinating people and dependencies, protecting quality, resolving risks, producing credible evidence and coaching school leaders and teams toward greater agency, distributed governance and sustainable practice.

This is a senior delivery role, not a purely logistical coordination or training position. The successful candidate must be able to work from outcomes, make sound routine decisions, challenge weak assumptions respectfully, close loops without repeated prompting and escalate material issues early with clear options and a recommendation.

Key responsibilities

A. End-to-end project management (approximately 60%)

1. Translate design into execution. Convert approved proposals, objectives and outcomes into practical workplans with milestones, roles, timelines, decision points, dependencies, budgets, quality criteria and evidence requirements.
2. Own the integrated delivery plan. Maintain a reliable portfolio view across school activities, capacity-building, coaching, partners, events, donor deliverables and reporting cycles; identify collisions and adjust sequencing before they become crises.
3. Create clear accountability. Establish named ownership and decision rights for each deliverable; agree expectations early; follow up consistently; and ensure commitments are closed, renegotiated or escalated.
4. Manage risks, issues and dependencies. Anticipate implementation, participation, staffing, school-leadership, infrastructure, safeguarding, reputational and donor-compliance risks. Maintain active registers and escalate material issues with impact analysis, response options and a recommended course of action.
5. Coordinate stakeholders. Serve as the day-to-day coordination point across nafda teams, schools, principals, teachers, coaches, facilitators, partners, donors, vendors and relevant education stakeholders, while respecting agreed relationship ownership.
6. Protect implementation quality. Establish fit-for-purpose quality gates for guides, sessions, school plans, initiatives, deliverables and documentation. Review outputs for accuracy, coherence, feasibility, Theory-of-Change alignment and readiness before they move forward.
7. Manage donor and partner delivery. Track contractual outputs, prepare accurate narrative inputs and supporting evidence, coordinate timely submissions and ensure claims are proportionate to verified implementation. Distinguish completed, partial, delayed and undocumented results without overclaiming.
8. Coordinate budget and logistics. Work closely with Finance and Operations to forecast activity costs, monitor spending against approved budgets, flag variances early, coordinate procurement and transport processes, and ensure financial documentation is complete and timely.
9. Operationalize MEL and learning. Translate the approved impact and M&E approach into simple, usable collection routines; maintain clean trackers; verify data quality; interpret implementation evidence; and convert learning into practical recommendations and course corrections.
10. Run effective project governance. Prepare concise agendas and decision notes, document actions and owners, maintain version control, and provide regular status reporting focused on progress, risks, decisions and next steps.

B. Senior coaching and school accompaniment (approximately 40%)

1. Provide differentiated coaching. Assess school readiness, capacity, context and commitment, then calibrate the intensity and form of support rather than applying one uniform model to all schools.
2. Coach principals and governance teams. Support leaders to translate values and community vision into SMART priorities, distributed roles, action plans, budgets, stakeholder engagement, monitoring, sustainability and reflective adaptation.
3. Build ownership, not dependency. Use questioning, feedback, modelling and structured reflection to strengthen autonomous judgment and accountability. Clarify standards and boundaries without taking decisions away from school leaders.
4. Move from individual participation to institutional practice. Help principals build functional teams beyond the principal, distribute leadership, establish follow-up routines and embed learning across the school rather than leaving implementation with one motivated teacher.
5. Coach implementation quality. Observe and support teachers, facilitators and school teams implementing nafda tools and initiatives as assigned.
6. Facilitate high-quality learning. Design and lead working sessions, leadership capacity-building, Communities of Practice and peer-learning spaces that produce practical decisions, tested tools and accountable next steps.
7. Strengthen evidence-based reflection. Help schools connect community challenges to learning objectives, planned actions, student agency, observable outcomes and evidence; support honest analysis of what is working, what is not and why.
8. Maintain professional boundaries. Recognize when an issue requires specialist, safeguarding or psychosocial referral; avoid allowing supportive relationships to displace the role's educational and project mandate.
9. Document coaching and progression. Maintain concise coaching records, agreed actions, follow-up dates and school-progression evidence, and surface patterns that should inform program adaptation or strategic decisions.

Expected outputs

1. Integrated project plans: Current workplans, calendars, RACI/ownership maps, milestone trackers and dependency views for assigned projects.
2. Project-control records: Risk, issue, decision and change logs; concise meeting records; follow-up trackers; and clear escalation notes.
3. Quality-assured deliverables: Reviewed guides, session plans, school frameworks, implementation tools, reports and supporting evidence that meet agreed standards.
4. Reliable reporting: Regular internal status updates and timely donor/partner narrative inputs, evidence packs and financial-coordination inputs.
5. School coaching plans: Differentiated support plans, coaching records, agreed actions and progression summaries.
6. Learning and recommendations: Periodic synthesis of implementation patterns, recurring bottlenecks, risks and recommended program adaptations.

   Outcome

   Evidence of success

   Integrated execution

   Every project has a current workplan, named owners, milestones, dependencies, quality criteria and evidence requirements.

   Predictable delivery

   At least 90% of agreed milestones are delivered on time, or an approved variance is secured before the due date.

   Early risk management

   Material risks are identified early and escalated with impact analysis, options and a recommendation - not only after delivery is affected.

   Reliable donor compliance

   Reports, evidence and financial inputs are accurate, timely and accepted without material rework.

   Coaching that changes practice

   School coaching produces documented actions, stronger ownership and observable progression in leadership, governance, implementation or sustainability.

   Independent routine ownership

   Routine coordination, follow-up and quality assurance are handled without the Director needing to reconstruct plans, chase closure or correct basic evidence.

Candidate profile

Required experience

1. At least eight years of relevant professional experience in education, school improvement, social development or a comparable field.
2. At least four years of direct responsibility for end-to-end management of complex, multi-stakeholder projects, preferably donor-funded and implemented across multiple sites.
3. Substantial direct experience coaching school principals, leadership teams, teachers or comparable adult professionals over time - not only delivering one-off training sessions.
4. Demonstrated experience converting broad objectives into executable plans, coordinating cross-functional contributors, managing risks and producing accurate reports and evidence.
5. Experience working with public, private and/or semi-private schools in Lebanon; familiarity with MEHE, REOs or the Lebanese education ecosystem is strongly preferred.
6. Experience facilitating groups through planning, problem-solving, reflection, conflict or change, while sustaining accountability and psychological safety.

Education and language

1. Bachelor's degree in education, educational leadership, project/program management, development studies, organizational development or a related field; a relevant master's degree is preferred.
2. Professional coaching, facilitation, project-management or change-management certification is an advantage, but does not substitute for demonstrated practice.
3. Excellent spoken and written Arabic and English. French is an asset.
4. Ability and willingness to travel independently to schools and activities across Lebanon.

Core competencies

1. Execution ownership: Plans backward from outcomes, anticipates what could block delivery, follows through and closes loops.
2. Autonomous judgment: Makes sound routine decisions, knows when to seek input and escalates with options and a recommendation rather than transferring the problem upward.
3. Coaching maturity: Balances agency with accountability; uses questions and feedback to build ownership without becoming directive, avoidant or rescuing.
4. Systems and Theory-of-Change thinking: Connects activities to outcomes, institutional practice, sustainability and nafda's values of active citizenship, social justice and good governance.
5. Quality and evidence discipline: Tests accuracy, relevance, feasibility and sufficiency of evidence; can distinguish implementation from impact and avoids overclaiming.
6. Data literacy: Maintains reliable trackers, interprets mixed quantitative and qualitative evidence and translates findings into decisions without creating unnecessarily complex M&E processes.
7. Clear professional communication: Writes concise plans, reports and decision notes; communicates expectations precisely; and adapts tone across schools, partners, donors and internal teams.
8. Relational authority: Builds trust while holding standards, navigating disagreement, addressing non-performance and protecting respectful collaboration.
9. Adaptability under pressure: Replans constructively during disruption, uncertainty or changing field conditions without losing accountability or documentation.
10. Integrity and boundaries: Acts consistently with values, confidentiality, safeguarding and professional role boundaries.

Recommended selection evidence

Because this role depends on demonstrated judgment and practice, selection should assess more than interview confidence. Shortlisted candidates should be asked to complete:

1. A practical project case: produce a one-page workplan, identify dependencies and risks, and write a short escalation recommendation.
2. A coaching demonstration: conduct a brief conversation with a principal who is behind schedule, defensive and asking the candidate to solve the problem for them.
3. A quality-and-evidence task: review a short implementation update, identify unsupported claims or missing evidence and propose proportionate corrections.
4. A writing task in English and a professional conversation in Arabic.
5. Reference checks focused on independent ownership, judgment, follow-through, difficult conversations and the ability to coach sustained change.

We encourage you to apply if you are a proactive, visionary education professional with a strong background in designing innovative educational paths and a passion for improving education outcomes.  Please fill out the Application before September 20, 2026. Join us in our mission to transform schools and create a brighter future for students.

https://forms.gle/HmkRUfJCyiwNbJmK6

Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. In-complete cover letters will not be considered.

nafda reserves the right to fill the position before the closing date of the published vacancy in case a suitable candidate is identified.

nafda is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, or disability status.