Senior Director – Government Partnerships

About the Role:

This is a build-and-execute role. The Senior Director – Government Partnerships will anchor and execute our engagement with government systems at multiple levels - from the MLAs and panchayats to municipal corporations and state departments. The aim is not to “run programs inside the government.”

The aim is to embed youth-led problem-solving inside governance structures in ways that:

● Are implementable

● Produce visible outcomes

● Strengthen institutional trust

● Create repeatable models

This role sits at the intersection of grassroots action and institutional systems. What this role will own

1. Identify and Build Strategic Government Pathways

You will identify and develop partnerships across:

● Education departments

● Panchayats and councils

● Municipal corporations

● MLAs and elected representatives

● Disaster management authorities

● Climate and environmental departments

● Mission-driven departments such as water, sanitation, and urban development

Your job is to understand what a government stakeholder is ready for — and integrate our changemaking work at that level, without diluting its core.

2. Execution

You will:

● Design partnership roadmaps

● Align multiple stakeholders

● Coordinate with internal teams

● Drive implementation on the ground

● Track outcomes

3. Close the Governance Loop

You will help build the loop between:

Youth Action → Data → Government Response → Improved Community Outcomes

This means:

● Connecting Solve Ninjas to local governance systems

● Ensuring that citizen-led issues are acknowledged and acted upon

● Building institutional trust through demonstrated improvements

● Translating ground realities into structured engagement pathways

4. Integrate Samaj Data

You will engage with Samaj Data — our bottom-up data platform.

SamaajData aims to:

● Map civic issues from the ground

● Chronicle citizen-led solutions

● Enable better institutional response

Your role will be to ensure that this bottom-up intelligence meaningfully informs government partnerships.

Not as a dashboard exercise — but as a decision-making tool.

Ideal Candidate Profile

Experience & Background

• Experience in project management, public systems, governance, partnerships, or related domains

• Experience working with or navigating government systems and institutional processes

• Proven experience leading and developing teams

• Strong operational and execution capabilities

Skills & Competencies

The ideal candidate will:

• Be entrepreneurial and comfortable building systems and partnerships from scratch

• Be able to operate effectively in ambiguity while maintaining strategic direction

• Demonstrate strong stakeholder management and relationship-building skills

• Balance strategic thinking with operational detail orientation

• Be comfortable engaging across community spaces and government offices

• Possess strong planning, coordination, and execution abilities

• Be deeply aligned with impact-driven and mission-oriented work

• Care deeply about decentralized governance, youth agency, and community-led change

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role will be defined by the ability to:

• Build credible and trusted government partnerships

• Create scalable and repeatable engagement models

• Enable visible community outcomes through institutional collaboration

• Strengthen trust between citizens, youth changemakers, and governance systems

• Embed youth-led problem-solving into public systems in meaningful and sustainable ways