Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change.
Omidyar Network has committed more than $1 billion to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple initiatives, including Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance & Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights.
About the Energy Access Team:
Energy Access is one of ON’s newest areas of focused work. Over 2 billion people worldwide lack access to reliable energy, and 60% of them have no electricity at all. We believe dependable access to electricity, for those who are totally disconnected or faced with unreliable power, enables people to achieve a higher quality of life and is a fundamental building block to economic empowerment. At ON we are focused on identifying business models and technology driven solutions addressing the issues of access, reliability, and affordability, which are necessary to achieve universal access to energy. In this new focus area, ON expects to play a range of roles, including investing in entrepreneurs and innovations, as well as market-changing policy/research interventions.
Position Summary:
The Director/EIR will be a seasoned investor playing a key role in testing the early investment hypothesis, crafting an investment strategy, and evaluating investment opportunities. S/he will be responsible for guiding investment priorities, deepening pipeline opportunities, and thinking creatively about the key areas of intervention for ON capital. In addition to being responsible for sourcing and completing new investment opportunities, s/he will work with investees to help them achieve critical business and impact milestones. Ideal candidates will provide technical expertise in energy and in investing. They will also bring a keen operational perspective to the ON Energy Access team. Either full-time or contractor role is an option and the location is flexible.
Responsibilities:
- Focus on execution & ongoing refinement of the investment strategy
- Build and develop pipeline of emerging market investments o Source new opportunities
- Deal structuring and execution
- Management of portfolio companies
- Constructing balanced investment portfolio
- Learning/capturing feedback
- Identify potential areas and approaches for influence beyond direct investments
- Help build the team’s thought leadership, network, and brand in the energy access ecosystem including identifying technologies and markets ripe for innovation and disruption
- Represent ON engagement at multi-stakeholder initiatives and sector convenings
- Draft case studies, blog posts, and articles on topics related to energy access
- Oversee agenda for continuous learning
- Guide annual progress reporting to ON partnership and board of directors
- Take up other responsibilities as necessary
Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience, including 5+ years focus on energy
- Deep passion for ensuring universal access to energy
- Experience sourcing, evaluating and structuring investable opportunities in the energy or cleantech sector
- Demonstrates deep domain knowledge, and clear understanding of technical and business model challenges present in the emerging market energy sector
- Experience representing sector and institutional interests in international settings (e.g. involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives or steering committees)
- Strong relationships with leaders and experts in the fields of emerging markets energy
- Excellent and clear written and oral communication skills
- Strong strategic mindset and proven ability to innovate, collaborate and translate strategy into action
- Success in developing and maintaining institutional, political, and personal relationships
- Ability to travel internationally as necessary
- High level of comfort with ambiguity and working in a dynamic, rapidly evolving organization
If interested, please apply here.
