Bahrain + 11 more
Director of Programmes and Learning
Organization
Posted 13 Feb 2026 Closing date 20 Mar 2026
Who We Are
Amna envisions a world where refugees have the power to shape their own futures, unbounded by the impact of trauma, conflict and displacement. We are a refugee-led organisation working to expand mental health support and community-led psychosocial services for communities affected by conflict and displacement, giving them the tools to heal, rebuild resilience, and rediscover joy and belonging.
Our approach is simple and evidence-based, developed in partnership with refugees and psychosocial experts. We work globally to fund, train, and empower frontline organisations and humanitarian workers to deliver trauma and identity-informed care to those affected by displacement. By fostering safe spaces for healing and offering creative and cultural tools and practices, we aim to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and create lasting change.
Since 2016, Amna has directly supported over 76,000 individuals, including children, youth, and adults trained over 3,600 facilitators from 720 organisations across 23 countries to deliver trauma- and identity-informed care. Our programs have indirectly impacted the lives of over 2 million displaced people, helping them find strength and hope in the face of adversity.
At Amna, we believe in the power of community, healing, and hope because every refugee deserves the chance to reclaim their future.
Safeguarding
We take a proactive approach to safeguarding, embedding care, accountability, and protection into everything we do. Safeguarding is a shared responsibility. We expect all staff to adhere to ethical safeguarding principles, follow Amna’s Safeguarding Policy, and intergrate safeguarding into daily work.
How Will You Make a Difference?
The Director of Programmes & Learning (DPL) provides strategic, technical, and operational leadership for Amna’s programmes across all geographies, partners, and ecosystem levels. The DPL champions a culture of learning, quality, and continuous improvement, ensuring that all programme strategies and initiatives are designed to advance Amna’s global mission.
The DPL leads the implementation of Amna’s Healing Ecosystem Approach, driving excellence across community-level healing, training cascades, organisational system-strengthening, and global field-building. The post holder is accountable for programme quality, safeguarding, impact measurement, learning, sustainability, and the professional development of the Programmes & Learning team.
The successful candidate will embody Amna’s values, modelling ethical programme leadership and fostering a collaborative, high-performing team culture. Acting as a critical bridge between vision and implementation, the DPL ensures alignment, coherence, and integration across all programme activities.
As a member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), the DPL contributes to organisational strategy, culture, and long-term impact. The role reports directly to the CEO and plays a pivotal part in translating organisational ambition into actionable, sustainable programmes globally.
Key areas of responsibility
- Strategic Leadership & Organisational Direction
The Director of Programmes & Learning provides strategic leadership for Amna’s global programmes, ensuring that all programme activity advances the organisation’s mission, values, and Healing Ecosystem approach.
- Steward Amna’s overall programme strategy, translating organisational vision into coherent, high impact programmes across geographies and contexts.
- Lead strategic decision-making on new geographies, scale pathways, multi-year initiatives, and major partnerships, informed by ecosystem and context analysis.
- Ensure strategic alignment and coherence across the whole organisation, while balancing innovation, quality, sustainability, and risk.
- Guide the organisation’s programmatic positioning and influence within the humanitarian, development, Mental Health and Psychosocial Care (MHPSS) and healing sectors.
- Represent Amna externally with donors, humanitarian and MHPSS networks, and global platforms, strengthening relationships and advancing Amna’s strategic priorities and thought leadership.
- Identify emerging opportunities, risks, and trends in the field that should inform programme direction, partnerships, and organisational strategy.
- Provide leadership, strategic vision, and direction to the Programmes and Learning Team.
- Programmes Oversight and Management
The Director of Programmes & Learning holds overall accountability for the design, quality, delivery, safety, and sustainability of all of Amna’s programmes across geographies, partners, and layers of the Healing Ecosystem.
- Provide end-to-end oversight of all programme activity, ensuring high-quality design, effective delivery, and responsible management across diverse humanitarian and development contexts.
- Ensure coherence, technical integrity, and methodological fidelity across all layers of the Healing Ecosystem: community-level healing, training cascades, systems-strengthening, and global fieldbuilding.
- Oversee programme planning, sequencing, and delivery to ensure feasibility, contextual relevance, cultural grounding, and alignment with strategic priorities.
- Ensure all programmes are safe, ethical, trauma- and identity-informed, and grounded in Amna’s relational approach.
- Embed safeguarding, risk mitigation, and psychological safety across the full programme cycle, from design through delivery, adaptation, and close-out.
- Serve as the programme safeguarding focal point, providing leadership during safeguarding concerns, investigations, or critical incidents, while working closely with the Director of Operations & Risk.
- Ensure Amna programme approaches are designed for long-term sustainability, organisational embedding, and community-led continuity.
- Champion approaches that strengthen local systems, build partner capacity, and support responsible transition beyond Amna’s direct involvement.
- Oversee cross-layer coordination and integration, ensuring thematic coherence, learning flow, and alignment across countries, partners, and programme components.
- Maintain oversight of operational feasibility, including programmes budgets, timelines, risks, and dependencies, in collaboration with Programme Managers, Operations and Finance.
- Lead programme-wide performance oversight, including quality, safeguarding, delivery progress, MEL integration, and financial performance.
- Team Management & Talent Development
The Director of Programmes & Learning provides inclusive, values-led leadership to the Programmes & Learning team, building leadership capacity, clarity, and a strong culture of accountability, care, and professional excellence.
- Provide overall leadership and line management for senior programme staff, including Programme and Learning Managers and senior technical roles, ensuring clear accountability, decision-making authority, and coordination across roles.
- Establish and maintain clear role boundaries, reporting lines, and effective matrix working across programme, regional, and partnership functions.
- Develop and nurture talent across the Programmes & Learning team through mentoring, coaching, and reflective practices.
- Ensure Programme Managers and senior staff have the skills, support, and confidence to safely manage complex programmes, including programe management, operational delivery, risk management, budgeting, and partner relationships.
- Foster a collaborative, respectful, and psychologically safe team culture that reflects Amna’s values, Code of Conduct, and relational approach.
- Lead performance management, including regular supervision, performance reviews, feedback, and development planning for senior staff.
- Support staff wellbeing and sustainability, recognising the emotional and relational demands of trauma-informed work.
- Model mature, compassionate, and reflective leadership, setting high standards for professionalism, communication, reliability, and cross-cultural humility.
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL)
The Director of Programmes & Learning ensures that learning, evidence, and reflection are embedded across Amna’s programmes and actively inform strategy, methodology, and ways of working.
- Provide strategic leadership for monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) across all programmes, ensuring that Amna’s Learning Strategy is purposeful, proportionate, and grounded in practice.
- Ensure that internal and external evaluations are meaningfully integrated into programme adaptation, methodological refinement, organisational decision-making and Amna storytelling.
- Oversee the use of evidence to strengthen programme quality, effectiveness, safety, and sustainability across contexts.
- Work closely with the MEL Manager to ensure learning systems generate insight rather than compliance, and support continuous improvement across the organisation.
- In collaboration with the CEO and MEL Manager, lead the development and stewardship of long term research and learning partnerships with Amna Learning Partners, building multi-year practice– research collaborations that generate longitudinal evidence for the field.
- Ensure that evidence generated contributes to global understanding of safety, healing, grief, and trauma recovery within displaced and crisis-affected communities.
- Facilitate organisational learning through synthesis, reflection, and knowledge-sharing across programmes, teams, and partners.
- Support the translation of programme learning into accessible insights for internal teams, partners, donors, and wider field audiences.
- As a member of the Senior Leadership Team
As a member of Amna’s Senior Leadership Team, the Director of Programmes & Learning contributes to the overall leadership, governance, and long-term direction of the organisation.
- Actively contribute to organisational strategy, governance, risk management, financial planning, and decision-making as a core member of SLT.
- Provide strategic programme insight to inform organisational priorities, resource allocation, and growth decisions.
- Work closely with the CEO and fellow SLT members to ensure coherence between vision, strategy, and implementation across the organisation.
- Report to SLT and the Board on programme performance, strategic risks, learning, and emerging issues.
- Support the development of a strong, values-led organisational culture, modelling collaboration, accountability, and ethical leadership.
Qualifications And Experience
- Minimum of 10 years’ senior leadership experience within humanitarian, psychosocial, communityhealing, public health, or closely related NGO contexts.
- Proven experience designing, directing, or overseeing trauma-informed, healing-centred, and relational programmes, ideally with displaced, conflict-affected, or marginalised communities.
- Demonstrated experience leading multi-country, multi-partner, or multi-layered programmes in emergency, protracted crisis, and/or development settings.
- Strong track record in strategic programme planning, development, and design, including shaping multi-year initiatives and contributing to donor engagement, proposals, and reporting.
- Experience scaling programmes, methodologies, or organisational approaches while maintaining quality, safeguarding, and contextual integrity.
- Demonstrated ability to establish and manage effective partnerships with donors, implementing partners, learning or research partners, and other ecosystem actors.
- Strong experience in people leadership, including line management, performance management, mentoring, coaching, and leadership development of diverse, cross-cultural teams.
- Strong commitment to learning, reflection, and evidence-informed practice, including experience embedding MEL or learning processes into programme evolution.
- Fluency in English; Arabic is a strong advantage.
Other Requirements
- Willingness and ability to undertake periodic international travel, including to fragile and crisis - affected contexts, as required by the role.
- Ability to work in remote environments, collaborating across multiple geographies and time zones.
Desirable
- Experience working with refugee-led, community-led, or grassroots organisations, or supporting localisation and partner-led delivery models.
- Experience with cascading training systems and models, accreditation, or continuing professional development (CPD).
- Experience establishing or managing research partnerships, including longitudinal or applied learning initiatives.
- Experience with change management.
- Personal experience or deep contextual undersanding of one or multiple of the contexts Amna works in.
Skills & Attributes
- Deep grounding in relational, trauma- and identity-informed leadership, with the ability to hold complexity, care, and accountability simultaneously.
- Strong operational literacy, including confidence engaging with budgets, risk management, safeguarding, procurement, HR and compliance (in collaboration with specialist teams).
- Strong systems thinking, with the ability to work across community, organisational, and ecosystem levels and to balance long-term vision with practical delivery.
- High levels of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and reflective capacity, including the ability to lead ethically in emotionally demanding environments.
- Excellent communication, writing, and influencing skills, with the ability to translate complexity into clear strategy and direction.
- Ability to make sound, values-led decisions under pressure, including in contexts of uncertainty, risk, or crisis.
Work Location And Environment
This role is a remote job opportunity, and open to applicants in the UK and MENA region. We especially encourage candidates from countries where Amna has established partnerships, including Lebanon and Jordan.
Amna offers a hybrid working environment to its employees allowing for a blend of remote and in-person work.
Please note that the nature of working environment and hybrid schedule may be adjusted as per the organisation’s evolving needs.
Remuneration Package
At Amna we are committed to attracting and retaining top talent by offering competitive compensation and benefit packages. We believe in rewarding talent and expertise at a level that corresponds with the local market conditions, ensuring that all our team members are fairly compensated for their skills and contributions.
Please note that compensation will be benchmarked and weighted according to the cost of living and market standards in the country where the candidate currently resides.
Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Amna is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where all employees are valued, respected, and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives and talents.
As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disabilities status.
Applications are strongly encouraged from people with lived experience as refugees or displacement
How to apply
To be considered for this opportunity, please submit your CV and motivation letter to hr@amna.org by 20th March 2026.
For more information on Amna's work please visit our website: www.amna.org
Applications might be reviewed on a rolling basis, so early submission is strongly encouraged. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted
Job details
Countries
- Bahrain
- Egypt
- Iraq
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Morocco
- Oman
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Syrian Arab Republic
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Source
Type
Career category
- Program/Project Management
Years of experience
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