Role: Lead, Centre for Collective Wisdom
(an initiative by SELCO Foundation and Apurva.ai)
Location: Bangalore
Reports to: Associate Director, SELCO Foundation
Starting date: Immediately

About SELCO Foundation:

SELCO Foundation is an open source, not for profit organization that engages in field-based R&D and ecosystem building for deployment of clean energy solutions that alleviate poverty in tribal, rural and urban poor areas. The organization works in collaboration with practitioners in the social sector, energy entrepreneurs, NGOs from various developmental sectors and educational institutions to link the benefits of sustainable energy to poverty eradication. The organization works across verticals such as energy access, health, livelihoods, enterprise development with practitioners in the social sector, energy entrepreneurs and partners from various developmental sectors.

About Apurva.ai:

Apurva.ai is a not-for-profit organization housed in the Centre for Exponential Change, headquartered in Bangalore, India. Solving large and complex problems requires a deep understanding of the overall system and its interdependencies; most importantly, access to the collective wisdom hidden across the ecosystem of systems and people, with a community-centric approach. Apurva.ai is a digital infrastructure that enables social change leaders to unearth and amplify the collective wisdom of their ecosystem. Deeply rooted in trust, inclusion and emergence as its core values, and by leveraging exponential technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Apurva.ai helps them address societal challenges more effectively rapidly and drive positive social impact at an exponential scale and pace.

Centre for Collective Wisdom:

SELCO Foundation, powered by Apurva.ai, is currently building a knowledge infrastructure for SELCO as an organization. Extrapolating that effort, SELCO in partnership with Apurva.ai is reimagining the problem-solving for the development sector (with a focus on agriculture, rural development, entrepreneurship and community development) by facilitating curation and consumption of the hidden wisdom across ecosystems. The quest is to establish a Centre for Collective Wisdom as a physical and digital infrastructure by forging key partnerships, fostering ecosystems, and building the most relevant and useful use-cases that will benefit the development sector.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Partnerships & collaboration
    The Centre Head will be responsible for identifying and nurturing the right ecosystem, forge partnerships for curation and consumption of the Collective Wisdom across a variety of stakeholders; collaborating with social organizations, change leaders, key influencers including Govt and sectoral leaders, funding partners etc. A focus on partners in agriculture, rural development, community development with be prioritized.
  • Stakeholder management
    The Centre Head will play a lead role in managing all nodal persons, communities and institutions engaged with the development of the Centre – both internally and externally. They will be responsible for day-to-day coordination with all key stakeholders. The Centre Lead should be able to leverage their networks and experience of working in relevant sectors of agriculture, rural development, entrepreneurship and community development.
  • Strategic leadership
    The Centre Head will play a strategic role of conceptualizing and setting up the Centre for Collective Wisdom, as a digital and physical infrastructure. Right from the purpose, the value proposition, the user journey, to its manifestation through specific outputs and outcomes, the Centre Head will design the strategy and processes. Most importantly, constantly fine tune the pathways to scale. The Centre Lead must be able to build key connections between problem statements in agriculture and other relevant fields and the use cases of Apurva.ai technology to be able to solve for them.
  • Program development & management
    The Centre Head will be accountable for multiple programs required to achieve the Centre's objectives. It includes strategizing and prioritizing the program and following them through to closure.
  • Insights & learnings
    The Centre Head will design for capturing the insights and learnings emerging across the programs, domains and geographies. This will enable better decision-making internally and help share them with the wider ecosystem.
  • Knowledge Dissemination
    The Centre Head will design a strategy to share the emerging knowledge from the various initiatives of the Centre in a simple, useful and relevant fashion with the wider ecosystem.
  • Supporting team
    The Centre Head will build a strong dedicated team based on the requirements and the growth trajectory. This will help mobilize the resources at the right pace and achieve the objectives.

Who should apply:

  • Interested candidates should have at least 12-15 years of work experience, preferably in a leadership role in the development sector in the themes of agriculture, rural and community development
  • Deep understanding of the contexts of problem-solving, ability to identify the right course of action in an agile fashion with relations to the overarching themes
  • Experience in building ideas from the scratch, strategic thinking, leading multiple programs and teams
  • Excellence in fostering long-term and productive partnerships, and managing diverse stakeholders for program sustainability
  • Self-driven, creative and energetic. A go-getter with self-efficacy
  • Keen interest in working and engaging with early-stage platform development
  • Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and multicultural environment
  • A Masters certification (or higher) in Agriculture, Rural Development, Community Development is preferred. Exhibited expertise in these domains is relevant.
  • Experience in exploring use cases for tech products for stakeholders engaged in agriculture and rural development is also desirable.

How to apply:

To apply for the position of Lead, Centre for Collective Wisdom, Please click Here