Program Manager

01-28-2025

About The Synergist 

The Synergist is a social venture that addresses a growing need to collectively face societal issues by addressing broken or inefficient systems and accelerating societal (co-)impact.

With globalization, the digital age, and increased mobility, we now have collectively more knowledge, capability, and capacity to solve the worldʼs most challenging social issues than ever before. But complex issues canʼt be solved in isolation. The sheer number, variety, and interests of stakeholders on any given issue make it difficult to focus everyoneʼs expertise and resources on a shared goal.

The Synergist is an independent, neutral backbone and incubator for societal issues. It brings together the right people, organizations, and institutions to focus on solving societal issues both personally and with technology tools. We foster an organized and collaborative environment that enables collective impact by co-defining a shared vision, goals and strategies with members; bringing on board relevant partners; establishing and maintaining a transparent and balanced governance structure; coordinating and driving activities and bringing to life concrete projects and solutions that have been shaped with and complemented by members.

The Synergist is a globally focused organization based in Brussels, Belgium.

Your Role

The Program Management team is responsible for driving the Synergist programs on a day-to-day basis, including setting the long and mid-term program strategy, designing and executing program activities, mobilizing internal team members and external stakeholders, and developing competencies and new opportunities. 

As a Program Manager, you will support and provide scalability to the Program Directors and Program Executive Directors, with an emphasis on helping to ensure that the day-to-day activities run smoothly, on time, and to a high-quality standard. This means a variety of things, from purely project management responsibilities to participating and delivering tasks, organizing meetings and logistics, engaging with partners and collaborators, and handling other project work. The Program Manager acts as the primary user of the Synergistʼs program-specific online platforms, ensuring the high quality of usability, engagement, and content.

Being a senior team member, the Program Manager starts to take overarching responsibility for driving one or more projects or workstreams for The Synergist (with the support of a Program Director). As the day-to-day lead and external face of the initiative(s), the Program Manager is accountable for driving the overall strategy, managing and growing the membership base, and ensuring the best possible deliverables and results for the project. The Program manager acts as a reference point for junior team members, acting through the values, attitude & methodologies of The Synergist, and sometimes takes responsibility for leading interns during their traineeship.

Responsibilities: 

  • Ensures his or her projects are efficiently run, taking into account resources available and expectations of the board and key stakeholders.
  • Develops an excellent grasp of the subject matter and acts as an informed value-adding participant with a seat at the table.
  • Defines governance & protocols and constantly looks for ways to strengthen the governance of the program. Nurtures relationships with members, partners, and advisors.
  • Maintains a positive team working atmosphere so Synergist team members, partners, and stakeholders enthusiastically invest their own time and resources in the project. 
  • Supports the Executive director and management in business development opportunities at the Group level. 
  • Confidently assists the Program Management team in delivering the best possible results for the Program(s). Program management activities include but are not limited to 
    • stakeholder engagement; in small groups of 1-3 stakeholders or in leading larger multi-stakeholder working group sessions of 8 or more stakeholders 
    • hands-on support for the co-creation of sustainable targeted solutions to societal issues and ensuring good governance within programs 
    • leading meetings and events preparations 
    • mobilization of educational campaigns 
  • Works with the Programs Executive Director and Program Directors to put in place an efficient and agile project management structure and leads planning and progress update meetings, helping the team to define the next priorities and tasks, flagging potential issues as they occur.
  • Takes ownership of the organizational project management tool (Asana) and is responsible for ensuring its optimal usage to track the teamʼs progress on projects. 
  • Takes charge of event planning/organization by handling every aspect of it (i.e. coordinating travel and hotel bookings, helping to prepare meeting materials, taking minutes of the meeting, and helping to create a meeting report, etc.) with minimal supervision.
  • Acts as a Community Manager and, together with other community managers, share the responsibilities of managing and growing one or more Synergist online platforms (e.g., the Synapse mapping and networking tool). This includes working with the IT and communication team to ensure the best usability, assisting users with various needs (e.g. giving demonstrations to new users, helping with onboarding and answering community questions, adding and maintaining quality checks for user content, participating in the development of new features and helping grow the number of active users).
  • Adopts a Synergist mindset, aspiring to deliver excellence with an agile, collaborative, positive, proactive attitude.

The successful candidate will be expected to:

  • Have an educational background equivalent to at least a Masterʼs degree coupled with 6-8 years of working experience, OR a Bachelor's degree with 8-10 years of working experience in a quickly changing environment in project coordination and management. 
  • Have a keen interest in shared value initiatives.
  • Have an excellent command of written and spoken English, and excellent communication skills. 
  • Have prior business experience and be comfortable with working directly with senior or executive-level employees and partners (project management, program management, stakeholder engagement, partnership management, client service). 
  • Have the ability to think conceptually and connect the dots to form an overview of projects and situations.
  • Have advanced technical skills (advanced user of MS Suite, Google Suite, ERP or CRM tools, etc.) and be able to learn and adopt new technologies fast.
  • Have a solutions-oriented and innovative approach with a can-do attitude.
  • Be a self-starter who has a track record in handling multiple simultaneous projects at the same time without jeopardizing delivery timeline or quality of outcomes.
  • Be stimulated by challenges and have a positive, proactive, can-do problem-solving mindset.
  • Be detail-oriented, very well organized, and at ease with balancing many conflicting priorities at once.
  • Be able to adapt to quickly changing priorities and environments and be able to handle and perform under pressure.
  • Be curious and open-minded, open to new ideas, concepts, and people.
  • Have excellent academic credentials.

Preferred:

  • An EU work permit. 
  • Experience working in the healthcare or environmental sector. 
  • Professional or personal experience in social entrepreneurship or corporate social responsibility. 
  • Experience in EU and other funding systems for societal projects. 
  • Fluency in one or more foreign languages. 

What's In It for You:

  • The opportunity to work with global profit and not-for-profit players to address societal needs (like patient engagement, epidemics management, women's health, rare diseases etc.);
  • The opportunity to join a dedicated, dynamic, diverse, and fun team that works to develop innovative and efficient programs aimed at solving challenges that others ignore or have been unable to resolve;
  • Learn about societal issues and be part of helping to solve them.
  • The chance to constantly develop and refine new skills as The Synergist develops new partnerships and innovative ideas.
  • Successful Program Managers who wish to grow at The Synergist will have the opportunity to advance in Program Manager positions & Program Director roles.

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