Director – Consulting & Research Job at PULA in Nairobi, Kenya

About the job

About Pula

Pula is an insurtech firm that provides agricultural insurance design and execution services, specializing in index-based insurance, and is backed by top-tier VC investors. Since 2015, we have provided climate insurance to 11M+ smallholder farmers, 31% of whom are women across 19 markets in Africa and Asia. So far we’ve protected agricultural investments over $1.7B from climate risks.

Pula is a fast-paced space, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges and we are made up of a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, our values are:

• Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
• Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
• Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
• We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

According to the UN’s Inter Governmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall. Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.

إقرأ أيضا:وظائف عمل في القطاع المالي في السعودية

We are a for profit, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.

The Pula Director – Consulting & Research

Pula is seeking an experienced consulting director to build our insights into smallholder farmers. She/he must have a love for building partnerships across commercial and public sector, profits and nonprofits, probing into data, solving challenging problems, and structuring complex processes, while also being comfortable building a cutting-edge ag-tech startup.

She/he is expected to independently lead consulting engagements that leverage our trove of existing relationships, products, data and leverage the potential of new technologies, including remote sensing, with the goal of delivering tangible new consulting revenue and long term new commercial opportunities. Tasks will range from liaising with new research and corporate and philanthropic clients, to working with management and tech teams to ensure smooth delivery of research and insights, to visiting the field to understand the on-the-ground perspective, to synthesizing learnings from the business and clients, to contributing to the creation of new value-additive products for farmers, agribusiness, insurers, governments, mobile operators and their agent networks.

إقرأ أيضا:مطلوب أمينة مكتبة في المستشفى التخصصي في عمان, الاردن – وظيفة رائعة للباحثين عن وظائف في الاردن

The Director- consulting & research will report to the President & Co-Founder, and work in close collaboration with the partnerships, product, commercial, actuarial and operations teams.

A detailed job description for the position is as follows:

Independently lead consulting engagements with our clients that include governments, private sector companies and development agencies. Manage the whole consulting cycle from identifying new opportunities, working with the commercial team to pitching for opportunities, developing proposals and managing a small team of analysts to deliver on the project. The nature of projects can be diverse ranging from advising governments on strategies for increasing agriculture insurance penetration to developing an agri-lending and insurance product for a regional bank to delivering capacity development programs for regulators and policymakers.

Lead our consulting and research projects partnering with our philanthropic and consulting partners that include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shell Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, KPMG, Bayer Foundation amongst others, working with a small team to deliver on the contracted deliverables. You will lead discrete data analysis and research initiatives that help Pula better understand customer behavior as identified by these 3rd parties, for example: estimating impact of gender on insurance uptake in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.

إقرأ أيضا:مطلوب مهندس ميكانيكي أول لدى Equinix EMEA  في محافظة جنوب الباطنة ، عُمان

Lead the team on identifying new commercial opportunities in new and existing markets, supporting market sizing for feasibility studies in new countries and ensuring that our commercial team has a steady supply opportunities.

Lead pula’s external communication and messaging through editorials, newsletters and webinars, publicizing the research work as well as wider work the company, coordinating with different departments in the business.

What you need to have to be successful- the hard skills:

• You can demonstrate to have originated and delivered on consulting work from development agencies and/or institutional donors for a value of at least $500,000 over the course of your career.
• You have experience working with Development Agencies at all levels and navigating institutional structures both in private foundations and either bilateral or multilateral agencies.
• Partnerships, Business Development or Consulting experience in the area of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance, Food Security, Financial Inclusion or related is a significant advantage.
• Networks, Experience and knowledge in the Climate Finance and Carbon Credit Industry will place you at an advantage.
• You are fully comfortable with Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.

We value soft skills as much, or often even more as the above mentioned hard skills. The right profile fit for the role is therefore described below, with weights indicating relative importance.

Relationships: 30%

Can build relationships with stakeholders rapidly and can expand into new networks quickly. Having deep rooted existing networks and relationships is a plus. Passionate about building and maintaining relationships.

Resilient & Intense: 20%

Can navigate deal complexity and will not give up until the deal is signed. Tenacious. A self starter. Recovers quickly from tough situations. Eager to build new partnerships, has a point to prove and looks to prove that point at Pula. Builds their profile and therefore reputation around Pula and the Pula products. They do not want to fail and therefore will do what it takes for Pula to succeed.

Coachable: 10%

Adaptable: Is eager to learn and grow in their skills and ability. Is resourceful to close any skills and knowledge gap. Openly receives and shares feedback. A consummate learner.

Gravitas yet Street Smart 20%

Charming. Has a confident, comfortable presence. Can sit across from the UN Secretary General, Bill Gates or the Minister of Agriculture of Kenya and hold their own and pitch without assistance. Can understand and map the stakeholders in a new partnership, identify and test champions, structure the partnership, problem solve and find another way when a proposed partnership gets stuck.

Communication: 10%

Can confidently convert information internally and externally adjusting quickly between written and verbal communication as situations call for it. Follows through on action points from conversations and can succinctly summarize the progress required to progress a partnership.

What Pula will bring to the table

• Growth potential: With an untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide, on track to doubling the number of farmers insured in 2021 and Pula’s global leadership in Agriculture Insurance, our new staffers have a tremendous upside growth potential.
• Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
• Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed a $6m series A funding in December 2020 in the right in the middle of the pandemic a clear testimony of the opportunity that Pula is going after.
• Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
• Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, reporting to the CEO and Co-Founder, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
• Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
• Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
• Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.

To learn more about Pula you can visit

• TED Talk: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding
• New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them
• The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.

Cover letters are optional. You can add one if there is any additional information you would like to share about your interest in Pula, the role or your experience. We review applications on a rolling basis.

Pula’s mission is to provide farmer resilience. To achieve this, we put our small holder farmers that use our services and the employees that provide them at the heart of everything we do. For that purpose, Pula was created to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.