Communications Specialist

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About Us:Bixal is a consulting company based in Fairfax, VA, working alongside governments and organizations to help them deliver better services and experiences to the communities they serve. Using evidence-based knowledge and technology, Bixal empowers clients to deliver on their missions more effectively by fostering a culture of learning and continuous improvement.

Location:This role is based in Kampala, Uganda.

What will you do?The Communications Specialist plays a pivotal role in supporting USAID/Uganda's Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) initiatives by developing and implementing comprehensive communication strategies that facilitate data use, learning, and adaptation. Reporting to the Director of Performance Improvement, this position is responsible for creating visually appealing and effective communication materials across various media formats. The Communications Specialist will also collaborate closely with the Director of Evaluation to support the dissemination of evaluation results and the development of accessible, graphically effective reports, action briefs, learning briefs, and evaluation presentations. As a key member of a cross-functional team, the Communications Specialist will apply human-centered innovation and effective communication strategies to improve stakeholder engagement, and advance MEL and Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) capacity-building efforts. This role involves managing outreach and marketing activities, conducting stakeholder engagement across the USAID/Uganda Mission, implementing partners, and ensuring that benefits-related digital content is accurate and relevant to the different stakeholders. The Communications Specialist will also develop overarching engagement strategies, create a range of supporting materials, and work continuously to drive engagement and growth across communication platforms.

Responsibilities

• Develop an overarching communications strategy document that will guide how to tell the UMEL story internally and externally.
• Develop a knowledge management system by establishing a system for capturing, organizing, and disseminating MEL-related resources, tools, and best practices to facilitate access to information and promote learning.
• Create and manage stakeholder outreach strategies in collaboration with a broader outreach team to promote learning outcomes and best practices across the mission and implementing partners.
• Develop content (including ideation, creation, editing, and visuals) to support learning and adaptive management strategies tailored to identified audiences, ensuring clarity and relevance of communication materials.
• Supervise the Graphics and Multimedia Specialist by providing creative direction on all design-related tasks.
• Lead the support for the UMEL technical teams in developing tailored training materials that are visually appealing, interactive, and consistent with USAID’s branding and marking guidelines.
• Create engaging and accessible dissemination products to share insights, lessons learned, and best practices across the Mission and with implementing partners.
• Conduct stakeholder engagement efforts to understand diverse user communication needs.
• Synthesize and distill data and learnings from evaluations, assessments, studies, and reviews into digestible knowledge management and visualizations for stakeholder engagement to be used for strategic decisions and practical implementation.
• Build internal capacity of colleagues in basic communication skills, such as using approved USAID-branded slide decks and reporting templates.
• Collaborate with the Learning Practice Specialist and Director of Performance Improvement to support the documentation of CLA case studies within IPs, the Mission, and the UMEL Activity.
• Lead the completion, editing, and formatting tasks to finalize program documents and communications consistent with USAID branding and written standards.
• Participate in field visits and support community outreach efforts, including developing field activity schedules, site briefers, etc.
• Develop thought leadership pieces, such as blogs and impact stories, for USAID/Uganda and BIXAL to share externally.
• Support the development and finalizing of work plans and reports for the USAID client.
• Leverage analytics tools and platforms to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and use the metrics to recommend improvements.
• Perform other duties as required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in related field, plus 7 years of related experience; or Master’s Degree, plus 3 years of related experience.
• Fluent in spoken and written English
• Strong writing and editing skills.
• Excellent stakeholder communication skills – ability to communicate effectively with various audiences.
• Excellent organizational skills – ability to manage multiple content calendars.
• Operational knowledge of creative software, such as Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, Sketch, Wow, etc.
• Knowledge of best practices for social media engagement.
• Demonstrated experience with digital content creation, writing principles, and organization for readability and assistive technology.
• Experience in public relations, media, and marketing.
• Experience with gathering and distilling SEO data.
• Creative thinker and problem solver, interested in participating in brainstorming sessions and improving best practices.