Deputy Executive Director

**Job description**:
**Location**: Rio de Janeiro, Dakar, Nairobi, Brussels, or Kuala Lumpur

**Contract**: Fixed-Term, full time (100%)

**Duration**: Two years, with possibility of four years extension

**Starting date**: 1st January 2025

**Deadline to apply**:21st October 2024

Compensation and benefits: MSF practice is to offer the C&B package current in the MSF entity establishing the contract.

**I. MSF INTERNATIONAL**

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural disasters. MSF offers assistance to people based only on need and irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.

MSF International is the legal entity that binds MSF’s 24 sections, 26 associations and 18 branch offices together. Registered in Switzerland, MSF International provides coordination, information and support to the MSF Movement, as well as implements international projects and initiatives as requested.

**II. POSITION BACKGROUND**

Access to Products for Healthcare (APH) is critical to MSF's Social Mission. MSF has been engaged in a wide variety of ways to improve APH in past decades.

In 2023, the MSF International Board approved the set-up of a new organisational model for APH work in MSF. A central part of this model is the creation of an international Structure that supports the APH agenda and is overseen by an Executive Board.

**III. PLACE IN THE ORGANISATION**

The Deputy Executive Director is part of the Access to Products for Healthcare Structure, member of its Management Team, and reports to its Executive Director.

**IV. OBJECTIVES OF THE POSITION**

The purpose of this position is to ensure strong medical leadership and maintain the connection between the APH Structure and senior leadership within MSF and global health organisations. The Deputy Executive Director will ascertain the medical relevance of the Structure’s Strategic Plan (2026-2031) and Annual Plans from 2025 onward. She or he will have a leading role in defining the medical priorities of the APH Structure, in collaboration with MSF’s medical and operational leadership platforms.

The Deputy Executive Director is first in line to cover for the Executive Director in their absence, ensuring the continuity and alignment of the APH’s strategic direction and operations.

**V. MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES**

The allocation of responsibilities between the Director and Deputy Director is dynamic, allowing for adaptability to changing needs, and is in line with the respective profiles of both people in the position who are complementary by design: one medical with strong experience in leadership, one with strong expertise in leadership, management, and institutional knowledge.

Guided by the Executive Director (ED) and working closely with the Heads of Department and Regional Coordinators, the Deputy Executive Director takes responsibility for the ongoing connection with the medical leadership inside MSF and where relevant externally and safeguards the medical relevance of the Structure’s work.

**Note that the scope of responsibilities for this position may evolve overtime with the development of the APH Structure set-up.**

**Vision and leadership**
- dentify, with MT and MSF’s medical-operational leadership platforms, the priority issues that the Structure invests in and works on
- With the Heads of Analysis and Advocacy, conceptualize strategies for each dossier on the Structure’s agenda, with the sole purpose of achieving the greatest possible improvement in access to relevant products for healthcare.
- Identify, propose and foster agreement on complementarities between the Structure and the access priorities in MSF’s Operational Directorates and sections.
- Engage with global health organizations working on access and innovation to identify opportunities for collaborations and complementarities that will benefit patients’ access to products for healthcare.
- Contribute from a medical perspective to the relevance of transversal dossiers that are strategic to improve, enhance, and guarantee access to current and future easy-to-use, affordable, and of quality products for healthcare for the benefit of MSF patients.

**Engagement and Communication**
- Represent the APH Structure in MSF’s DirMed platform and, together with the Executive Director, in the MedOps platform.
- With the Head of Analysis, guarantee the Structure’s connection with medical working groups and other relevant platforms inside MSF.
- With the Head of Advocacy, guarantee the Structure’s connection with the leadership of selected organisations in the field of global health.
- Represent, or accompany, the Executive Director in external engagement of relevant stakeholders, such as global health actors.
- Contribute to, and safeguard, the accuracy of any communication issued by the Structure’s team