Summary
The Flowminder Foundation is looking to appoint a new board member (non-exec) to strengthen the organisation’s impact on vulnerable people in the intersection of climate change, population mobility and sustainable development.
We seek individuals excited by the prospect of improving the lives of millions of vulnerable people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), through the use of novel data sources and high-quality data science.
Board members are expected to attend six board meetings per year, and to participate in the life of the organisation between board meetings, including advising the staff team and acting in an ambassadorial role for the Foundation. The total expected contribution per board member is on average one day per month.
Board members can be located anywhere in the world. Our board meetings are generally online and participation is remote. We look for opportunities to meet physically twice per year, but not being able to do so is not a blocker for becoming a member of the Board.
About us
Flowminder is a Swedish operational, non-profit foundation with 30 staff across our two offices in Stockholm (Sweden) and Southampton (UK), with team members in Africa, the US, France, Ireland and Austria.
We seek to improve population well-being among vulnerable people in LMICs by providing high-value decision support through data science in the development and humanitarian sectors. We use new types of large-scale digital data sources, such as de-identified mobile operator data and satellite data, combined with traditional population surveys and robust data science to develop and implement solutions that can positively impact the lives of millions of people.
Flowminder was founded in 2012, building on pioneering work by Drs. Bengtsson, Lu and Tatem, to use de-identified mobile operator data to monitor and predict population displacement after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and to understand population mobility to assess malaria transmission dynamics between Zanzibar and the Tanzanian mainland in 2008.
We have since expanded to work with mobile operators and to support governments, intergovernmental and national organisations across a number of sectors and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. We have also developed several additional pioneering data products based on data sources other than mobile operator data (i.e. geospatial data). We are currently scaling services to support placement of public services in LMICs.
We are currently active in a number of countries, including Haiti, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
We receive grants and provide consultancy services within our focus areas. Our largest donors and clients include Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the International Organisation of Migration; the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); the World Bank and others. Our work has been featured in media such as the New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, CBS, Le Monde and many others.
Our work to engage government end users and to mobilise resources is spread across several staff with different geographic focus and topic area expertise. In many cases, the end users of our services are governments in LMICs or intergovernmental organisations.
What we are looking for
We are looking to recruit a new board member to support the scaling of our impact in the intersection of climate change, population mobility and sustainable development.
We currently work with mobile operators to create privacy-safe estimates and statistics on migration, displacement and mobility patterns across countries totalling approximately 400 million people. We have shown the value of our operations across a number of crises but critically also shown in published research that many of the patterns of movements observed in the data are predictable, providing new data for preparedness to crises and climate impacts. For more than a decade, we have performed research and developed our technical and operational capacity to create impact. Building on these developments, we are now at a stage where we are operationally ready to significantly scale our support to new countries.
Our estimates, statistics, and methods provide an enormous opportunity to support solutions to a range of challenges in relation to climate change adaptation, migration and the evaluation of policy change. The data also provides an opportunity to influence the global policy dialogue on impacts and adaptation to climate change, based on facts.
Leveraging their networks and expertise, the new board member will assist us in forging relationships with relevant stakeholders, including government agencies, international organisations, national organisations and donors. This is to ensure Flowminder’s strategic role in how data on population mobility and new data types from mobile operators can support climate adaptation and mitigation, positioning the organisation as a thought leader on data quality in relation to population dynamics and climate change, and enabling Flowminder to become an active participant in policy discussions.
We seek individuals with senior experience in development or humanitarian organisations, with good connections to both end-users and donors. The ideal candidate will have worked on supporting governments in LMICs to embrace new solutions in sustainable development or humanitarian work. Alternatively the candidate has worked at senior levels in the role as a donor for large programmes seeking to fund new solutions. We are looking for individuals who have had such roles in governments, intergovernmental organisations, private sector or civil society organisations.
We also value technical or operational experience in low- and middle-income countries, which would confer an ability to also support the development and refinement of our products and services.
Compensation
Board members receive a fixed amount of USD 500 per board meeting they attend, for all regular board meetings (six meetings per year). Time outside board meetings are not compensated for financially. The total expected time contribution per board member is on average one day per month.
To apply
Please send your CV and cover letter to bm1+careers@flowminder.org or directly contact Linus Bengtsson, Chair of the Board at linus.bengtsson@flowminder.org.
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