Senior Advisor Analytics

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

16 January :59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)

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WHY JOIN WFP? 

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.

• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.

• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.

• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

JOB TITLE: Senior Advisor Analytics & Science for Food & Nutrition, PPGN
TYPE OF CONTRACT: Consultancy contract (CST-IV)
UNIT/DIVISION: Nutrition, School Meals and Social Protection Service
DUTY STATION (City, Country): This position reports to the Director of the Nutrition, School Meals and Social Protection Service.
The consultant will work remotely (from the Netherlands) but given her role as senior advisor, will travel to Rome as needed every 1-2 months for meetings.
DURATION: 11 months (26 January – 25 December 2026)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the frontline humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. Annually, WFP reaches more than 80 million people with food assistance in over 120 countries and territories. Around 10,000 people work for the organization, most of them in remote areas, directly serving the hungry poor. 

As part of the new WFP's Strategic Plan adopted in November 2025 and building off of Strategic Development Goal 2 (particularly target 2.2), nutrition is a cross-cutting priority – alongside food security - an important area, core to WFP's work. The Nutrition, School Meals and Social Protection Service leads WFP's efforts towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal target 2.2: ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030. The goal of WFP's Nutrition Strategy is to safeguard the nutrition of people in humanitarian crises, and to support better access to healthy, nutritious diets for those at greatest risk of malnutrition in a sustainable, dignified, and equitable manner. To achieve this goal, WFP focuses on three pathways: 1. Actions to combat malnutrition in humanitarian crises; 2. Approaches to improve the diets of those most at risk; 3. Strengthening systems and enabling equitable access to healthy, nutritious diets. 

Delivering the new Nutrition Strategy will require WFP to drive forward state-of-the-art work on situation analysis, development of scalable solutions to improve diets – including through fortification, and evidence generation on effective approaches to address wasting and improve diets. This demands a high level of specialist strategic advice, guidance, and quality assurance to ensure that WFP is able to position itself as a credible voice, exert a global influence in these areas (including in partnerships with donors, foundations and IFIs) and drive forward better solutions that can enable WFP to address and reduce humanitarian needs, including by supporting stronger government-led approaches.

The consultant has provided strategic leadership on key areas of WFP's work in these areas for many years. This includes development of the FNG and ENHANCE approaches, furthering a groundbreaking partnership with the Gates Foundation on the Modeling and Mapping of risk of inadequate Micronutrient intake (MiMi) initiative, advancing WFP thinking and strategic direction on fortification through social protection platforms, and providing highly technical expertise on the development and improvement of nutritious food solutions for use through WFP and government programmes as well as through business-led initiatives. The consultant has also taken forward important work to generate better evidence of what works to address malnutrition and built credible relationships with key global actors and initiatives including the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, WHO, the Rockefeller Foundation, and global initiatives focusing on nutritious food solutions, specially formulated foods and fortification. 

Since April 2024, the role of the consultant shifted more heavily towards a senior strategic advisory role which enabled her to deploy her highly specialist expertise and significant experience even more fully, ensuring WFP can properly benefit from the 25+ years of experience the consultant brings to this role. To reflect this shift, the role was retitled in January 2025 to 'Senior Advisor Analytics and Science for Food and Nutrition'. The focus of this role, the level of responsibility in terms of strategic engagement, and the required level of experience and technical expertise will be continued in 2026. The purpose of this assignment is outlined below, and this is anchored firmly in the work the consultant has driven forward effectively through previous assignments.

Strategic direction for state-of-the-art analytics

Significant progress has been made by WFP – particularly under the strategic leadership of the consultant – to develop and scale innovative solutions that can improve understanding of and responses to the nutrition challenges in the countries where WFP operates. These tools offer an important opportunity to shape WFP's role and function to address malnutrition, and to provide data-driven advice and guidance for governments and other actors on the actions that can be taken to strengthen systems to address malnutrition and improve diets in the long term.

Through this assignment, the consultant will work closely with the Nutrition Chief and Team Leads to strategically guide, quality assure and enable the effective use and scale up of these tools in support of the goals of WFP's Nutrition Strategy. This will include strategic engagement and direction setting for the ENHANCE platform, the application of diet cost and affordability metrics (through FNG, other situation analyses and monitoring) and the MiMi initiative. This will build on the consultant's unique insights and expertise in data, analytics, and understanding of the external stakeholder ecosystem.

Scalable nutritious food solutions

As outlined in WFP's Nutrition Strategy, the organization is uniquely positioned to influence demand for and supply of nutritious foods to address malnutrition among populations at greatest risk. This will include enhancing integration of fortified foods and other nutritious foods through national social protection mechanisms, and developing local, innovative nutritious food solutions that are accessible by populations at greatest risk of malnutrition.

The consultant has extensive experience and strategic insights into both nutrition-sensitive social protection – including the process for integrating fortified foods for general population and/or specific target groups (e.g. 1,000 days) as part of social protection – and the process for setting standards for, developing, testing, and supporting operational roll out of nutritious products. This strategic expertise will be harnessed through this assignment to enable WFP to define and take forward a clear vision for its work to improve demand for nutritious foods through social protection (including school meals) and to enhance supply through innovation and investment in nutritious food solutions including fortification. This will include maintaining effective engagement with the Gates Foundation on funding agreements with WFP that are supporting the scaling of fortified foods through social protection and other systems, and supporting specific COs (e.g. Pakistan, India and Indonesia) in their assistance to the government's nutrition-sensitive social protection programs. 

The consultant will also provide strategic leadership for work funded by the US government to enhance the protein quality of food assistance and continue to provide technical advice, thought leadership and quality assurance to the WFP Food Fortification Task Force and Fortification Review Committee. 

Generating evidence of what works

Significant gaps remain on the most cost-effective approaches to prevent and manage wasting and to improve the diets of people living in fragile contexts. The new WFP nutrition strategy is underpinned by a concrete plan to generate evidence of what works – working in collaboration with academic partners. As a well-respected senior scientist in Public Health Nutrition with over 150 scientific publications, and nearly 20 years of working on Nutrition at WFP HQ, the consultant brings very strong subject matter expertise, a wealth of institutional memory and internal WFP network, and a strong external academic/research network. The consultant is ideally placed to provide guidance and direction-setting to the Nutrition Chief, Team Leads and Research Coordinator in identifying and taking forward operational research in line with the overarching Nutrition Strategy. 

The consultant will also maintain her technical expert and quality assurance function in support of WFP's engagement with WHO on guideline development, the development of peer-review publications of WFP's work, and the research and innovation agenda on rice fortification. As required, the consultant will also provide technical advice for operational research and innovation led by Country Offices and Regional Bureaus, working in close collaboration with other GHQ Nutrition, School Meals and Social Protection teams. 

Cutting across all three of the above areas of focus for this assignment, the consultant will provide strategic insights and guidance on WFP Nutrition's efforts to mobilize the resources needed to drive forward situation analysis, fortification, local food solutions, evidence generation and other dimensions of the Nutrition Strategy – building on her engagement with and understanding of external actors and initiatives. 

ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

As member of the Nutrition management team (Chief, Senior Advisor and Team Leads), co-lead on developing, integrating and delivering on cross-service (Nutrition, School Meals and Social Protection) and core-team workplans, and supporting the Service's Director, particularly on the below specified areas, while pivoting as necessary as WFP continues to adjust to the new realities:

Strategic direction for state-of-the-art analytics
1.    Lead the technical development, manage the relationship with the partners / contributing entities and guide the strategic use of the Enhance platform (which is hosted by WFP (TEC) and created together with the Zero Hunger Lab of Tilburg University, Capgemini and Johns Hopkins University). This will include identifying opportunities for additional financing and working in close collaboration with the SAN team to enable effective use as part of WFP country programming, as well as use by external partners.

2.    In collaboration with Enhance project lead and SAN team lead, engage institution(s) with environmental expertise and interest to use the Enhance platform for analysis in that area to contribute to its development and promote buy-in and effective use of the platform.

3.    Maintain effective strategic engagement with other teams that use diet cost and affordability analyses (i.e. FAO, Tufts University, World Bank, Harvard University, IFPRI and SC-UK), including engagement with FAO for their roll-out of cost of healthy diet monitoring for which the Enhance platform would be a very good option.

4.    Provide expert input on the further shaping of the use of diet cost and affordability metrics for Social Protection and School meals, working with the Nutrition, SM and SP teams.

5.    Support Nutrition teams to increase visibility of and interest in applying diet cost and affordability metrics, including seeking collaboration for country-level and topical analysis:
i.    within WFP (e.g. with Social Protection, School Meals, APP, Climate and Resilience) 
ii.    outside of WFP (e.g. World Bank, ADB, IFAD, SUN and other technical agencies);

6.    Oversee the MIMI project, including through external donor engagement, and working across PPG to identify opportunities to strengthen WFP's approach to and analytical expertise for predicting food insecurity and malnutrition and use in early warning, preparedness, and response.

7.    Provide expert advice and guidance to drive forward data and analysis for decision making in the selection of approaches to prevent and supplement wasting as part of the UNICEF-WFP joint transition plan, in particular on dietary management of MAM.

8.    Provide expert input to Nutrition's collaboration with APP, through collaboration with Hunger Map Live team and its data scientists on MIMI; identifying ways to institutionalize diet cost and affordability metrics generation and use; and collaborate on providing input to SOFI report.

Scalable nutritious food solutions
9.    Provide interim team management to the Food Quality and Standards team (vacant P4 Team Lead position), overseeing food fortification, local food solutions and nutrition retail work, including leading on next steps from the grant application with the Dutch postcode lottery, and chairing internal committees as appropriate.

10.    Ensure successful start of the Gates Foundation funded work on rice fortification in Nigeria and West Africa, by guiding the project coordinator and being the primary focal point for the donor. Also, continue to lead engagement with the Gates Foundation Nutrition team for other opportunities on fortification and social / humanitarian assistance, in particular Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

11.    Ensure consolidation and formalization of WFP's collaboration with the Fortified Whole Grain Alliance, to enable effective engagement at country level where FWGs are integrated with school meals and other institutional procurement.

12.    Provide guidance and expert input to the work on Nutritional Adequacy, and towards mandating the fortification of staples, including rice, distributed by WFP.

13.    Contribute technical expertise on fortification, specially formulated foods and local food solutions to WFP's internal committee for the formulation of the Codex Standard for foods for older infants and young children, to the Community of Practice on Specialized Nutritious Foods of US government, to WFP's engagement on the Child Nutrition Fund, the First Foods Initiative, and to WFP's World Food Invest initiative. 

Generating evidence of what works
14.    Provide insights, advice, and guidance to Nutrition team on the development and roll out of operational research in line with the priorities of the Nutrition Strategy.

15.    Supervise writing of scientific papers for publication of WFP's work as applicable. 

Cross cutting
16.    Provide insights, advice, and guidance on funding opportunities for the areas of focus outlined in this TOR.

17.    Represent WFP Nutrition in external forums and committees as agreed with the Service Director.

18.    Present in technical forums, such as the CFS and global nutrition conferences as agreed with the Service Director – and support other Nutrition staff members to do the same. 

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

1.    Contributed to the implementation of the Nutrition strategy, aligned with WFP's new strategic plan and re-organized structure.
2.    Supported the Nutrition team and specific COs (e.g. Pakistan, Indonesia, India) towards the integration of Nutrition in Social Protection and School Meals and contributed to enhancing visibility of our work, internally and externally. 
3.    Managed and guided the Food Quality and Strategy team to deliver on their commitments, including supporting initiatives that increase the local supply and demand for fortified foods, for the general population and for specific target groups, also for prevention and treatment of malnutrition, with WFP as buyer or enabler for capacity strengthening.  
4.    Ensured securing, shaping and delivering the partnership workplans with the Gates Foundation, including associated project-related reports. 
5.    Worked with the Service Director, Chief and Team Leads to identify potential funding opportunities and to develop donor pitches.
6.    Ensured WFP nutrition expert input to the Codex working group on a standard for foods for older infants and young children, the First Food Initiative, World Food Invest and US community of practice for SNFPs.
7.    Maintained and shaped collaboration with key technical partners to further objectives that align with WFP Nutrition priorities, including on applying cost and affordability metrics to assess and monitor risk of food and nutrition insecurity and identify best intervention packages, identifying and testing local food solutions for prevention and management of wasting, impact of climate change on food and nutrition and of food production and diets on the environment.
8.    Continued to oversee the development of Enhance, an open-access multi-goal linear optimization platform, in collaboration with Zero Hunger Lab (Tilburg University), Capgemini and JHU, specifically aiming for integrating the multi-objective programming feature, launching the platform for external users, setting up a longer-term structure for platform maintenance, and formalizing the partnership with Capgemini and ZHL.
9.    Jointly presented to external audiences to further collaboration and specific engagement in line with agreed priorities for WFP Nutrition, e.g. World Bank, ADB, AU, CAADP and SUN.
10.    Supervised writing of scientific papers as applicable, e.g. on dietary management of MAM. 
11.    Presented at technical/scientific meetings, both internal and external, as appropriate and supported the wider Nutrition team to do the same. 

________________________________________
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
Education:    PhD in nutrition, nutrition science, community nutrition, or related field.
Experience:    

More than 25 years experience in international nutrition, community nutrition or related field required.
Experience in operations research or community-based participatory research or public health research required, including good record of scientific publications.
At least 10 years of experience working in WFP nutrition required.
Extensive network in international nutrition among development partners and academia required.
Experience working in emerging areas of nutrition such as food systems, nutrition sensitive, adolescent girls, climate change, double burden required.
Experience working in emergency desirable.
Experience in capacity development desirable.
 
Knowledge & Skills:  

Knowledge of global nutrition architecture required.
Knowledge of scientific methods and ability to critically analyse emerging global evidence for robustness, quality, and relevance.
Ability to work independently.
Good interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to work in multicultural setting.
Excellent written and oral communication skills required

Languages:    Fluency in English required.  Working knowledge of another UN language desirable. 
 

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