Chief Financial Officer 485 views0 applications

About African Leadership Academy

African Leadership Academy (ALA) seeks to transform Africa by identifying, developing, and connecting the next generation of ethical and entrepreneurial leaders for the continent. These future leaders, expected to be 6000 in 50 years, will work together to address Africa’s greatest challenges to achieve extra-ordinary social impact and accelerate the continent’s growth trajectory.

About the Role

Reporting to:
Chief Executive Officer

Responsible for:
The CFO will be an effective leader and organisational manager acting as a trusted partner to the other executives and the Board of Trustees of the organisation. The CFO is expected to provide the leadership, management and direction necessary to ensure that the organisation has the appropriate financial and operational structures, controls, and strength to maximize the organisation’s assets.

The CFO is also responsible for maintaining the credibility of the organisation, building trust with various stakeholders through the sharing of timely, high-quality information about ALA’s business and financial outlook. The CFO must be able to take away the “financial management worry” from CEO and provide opportunities to see the horizon. To support this agenda, the CFO must drive the Finance Group to transform data and information into powerful insights that will enable forward-thinking decisions.

ALA’s CFO must be comfortable with thinking outside the box in a resource-constrained and dynamic environment; embracing experimentation and technology and designing the structures, systems and processes that will take the organisation to the next level of operational agility and excellence, and sustainable growth. The CFO should have the ability to handle high-level strategy work with the Finance Committee of The Board of Trustee and executives, as well as be hands-on when it comes to operational activities. The critical areas the CFO will need to focus immediately are, supporting the executive team in executing the new ALA Strategy, providing analysis and insights into the different ways we can achieve the results we have promised stakeholders, and increasing the speed, quality and depth of information from the finance team.
Key Accountabilities

General Business and Strategic Leadership

• Provide financial leadership to the entire organization and serve as a key resource on overall strategic and operational matters.
• Support the executive team with key financial information and operational analytics to help them understand the business implications and the viability of their choices and decisions.
• Drive a culture of financial accountability in managing the organisation, adding value to the various business operations and voicing well-substantiated dissenting opinions.
• Lead the organisation in long range financial planning, using business data and external information to challenge business model assumptions, predict the possible business outcomes of different strategic options and competing opportunities, and make supported recommendations.

Financial Operations Leadership

• Lead the annual org-wide planning and budgeting process for 5 Divisions with 14 Operating Departments; forecasting operating, capital and staffing needs; identifying funding sources, margin contribution from programs and articulating annual contribution to financial sustainability.
• Responsible for delivering Annual Audited Financial report in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
• Monitor Periodic financial performance by measuring and analysing results, rationalising and optimize the impact of variances, and initiating corrective actions.
• Prepare periodic “Key Performance Indicators” and “Management Discussion Points” reports that summarise and identify the key business performance drivers and provide valuable insights and direction based on those results.
• Responsible for the integrity and effectiveness of internal and external financial and management reports to donors, lender, funders, senior management and Board of Trustees.

Risk and Compliance

• Co-lead the risk management system with CEO, focusing on predictive analytics to manage financial risks and support the CEO in managing strategic risks.
• Lead the design, development and maintenance of the organisation’s financial controls and policies, accounting practices, financial and grant reporting, annual financial audit, tax reporting, insurance coverage, regulatory compliance and cash management.

Capital and Investment Strategy

• Structure optimal investment plans while ensuring appropriate cash flow level for the organization’s operations; optimizing the tax and treasury positions and maximizing investment returns.
• Evaluate the organization’s fundraising plans in relation to current and future needs, and appropriate capital structure
• Ensure the organization has an appropriate capital structure and lead the planning, structuring, terms, and negotiation of new capital (fundraising with or without conditions or debt) for capital projects and planned endowment.
• Ensure Endowment Funds are invested within authorized and acceptable investments and risk frameworks while achieving optimal returns as per ALA Endowment Policy
• Maintain compliance with lender requirements, including compliance with lender covenants on existing debt.

Operational Excellence

• Drive and manage complex financial system, regulatory compliance, and process improvement projects (sometimes applies to multiple markets) and ensure that these conform to audit and financial standards and contribute to ALA’s operational excellence goal.
• Build a finance organization and infrastructure that is capable of meeting the organization’s future growth and operation excellence plans and establish functional objectives in line with these plans.
• Lead any financial system project and be involved in other systems decisions within the organization that could affect the integrity, effectiveness and efficiency of the financials.

The first 365 days

• Work with incumbent CFO on an opportunity to re-imagine the finance function and develop a 5-year pathway and future operating model for the Finance Function
• Support the CEO in enabling, operationalizing, and institutionalizing the new ALA strategic plan
• Develop and unbiased holistic end-to-end view of the organization’s full value chain, from customer needs to back-office operations to suppliers’ contributions to competitive positioning
• Target and recommend optimization solutions for process and system inefficiencies that affect business economics then drive the changes to improve challenges identified.
• Continue system optimization and automation work on the financial management process to support the quest for a leaner model and drive the implementation of a cloud-based integrated architecture for all finance-related systems.
• By 2020 our systems should only be managing exceptions everything else should be automated and seamless and team(s) should be able to share information and make connected, data-driven decisions in real-time.
• Drive data and analytics capability and capacity to support the changes above, moving from transaction (commodity) to value-add work; from transaction and reporting to data analysis and business partnering to drive decisions (competitive advantage).

*Job Requirements*

• Proven 5 to 7 years experience as multi-unit CFO or Finance Director and ready for the next challenge.
• BSc/BA in Accounting, Economics, Business, Finance or relevant field; MBA is a plus.
• Good knowledge of the International Financial Reporting Standard, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; and banking and corporate financial laws and risk management practices in South Africa.
• Demonstrated leadership experience in driving strong financial oversight, sound business strategy and operational excellence.
• An analytical mind that enjoys using rich micro and macro, structured and unstructured data to challenge assumptions, and support and influence decisions.
• Strong drive to create systems and lead technological changes that supports more cost-effective and efficient way to operate and deliver financial information to internal and external partners and support evolving business models.
• Strong communication and influencing skills to be able to convey recommendations, decisions and fresh insights on strategic topics to internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to build external alliances with educational institutions, start-ups, third-parties, non-profits, and corporates to go beyond what ALA can deliver alone while remaining nimble.
• Ability to navigate banking regulations in multiple countries such as South Africa and United States and cash movement complexities in most African Countries.
• Ability to balance strategic and operational work; strategize and solve big business and operational problems that span multiple periods, running the business, striking a balance between value-add processes and effective control, keeping an eye on changing business and supporting business model innovations.
• A strong track record of creating, developing and aligning teams to achieve their fullest potential
• Ability to synthesis people, process and technology to continuously increase nimbleness, quality and value-add work