Senior Program Officer

Employment Type: Full-time
Status: Contingent upon funding
Reports to: Senior Director

Location: Staff must reside in one of the following jurisdictions:
Arkansas, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, or Virginia.

Eurasia Foundation (EF) seeks a Senior Program Officer to support the anticipated FY 2026 Strengthening Talent, Research, Innovation and Vital Engagement (STRIVE) Program, a 30-month initiative funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. STRIVE will strengthen U.S. global leadership by helping U.S. higher education institutions develop strategic international partnerships and credit-bearing study, internship, apprenticeship, and research abroad pathways aligned with U.S. workforce, commercial, security, trade, and innovation priorities.

The Senior Program Officer will serve as the day-to-day lead for program implementation and will manage both STRIVE components: the national small grants competition for U.S. higher education institutions and the Higher Education Partnerships Initiative.

• Lead day-to-day implementation of STRIVE in coordination with the Senior Director and EF program, finance, and operations staff.
• Manage the annual workplan, implementation calendar, deliverables, concurrence items, and reporting deadlines.
• Oversee grant-making program and liaison with grant recipients.
• Coordinate regularly with ECA on program design, outreach, subaward selection, forum planning, communications, monitoring, and adaptive management.
• Prepare internal and external program updates, briefing materials, meeting notes, and required reports.

• Lead development of the national Request for Proposals, applicant guidance, eligibility criteria, review rubric, FAQs, templates, and outreach materials.
• Manage applicant support activities, including webinars, office hours, proposal clinics, and targeted support for institutions with limited federal grants or international programming experience.
• Coordinate eligibility screening, reviewer recruitment, reviewer orientation, conflict-of-interest documentation, scoring, panel deliberations, and ECA concurrence packages.
• Support negotiation and execution of subawards to accredited U.S. higher education institutions.
• Provide technical assistance to subrecipients on workplans, partnership development, credit-bearing program design, domestic labor-market alignment, sustainability planning, risk management, and reporting.
• Monitor subrecipient progress through check-ins, quarterly reports, documentation reviews, technical assistance tracking, and selected monitoring visits.

• Lead planning and implementation of public seminars, resource products, and the STRIVE Partnership Toolkit.
• Manage recruitment and selection processes for U.S. higher education participants and coordinate with ECA and U.S. Missions regarding foreign participant nominations for the in-person forum.
• Serve as lead coordinator for the STRIVE Higher Education Partnerships Forum, including agenda development, speaker coordination, participant communications, logistics, conference alignment, and follow-on planning.
• Manage the follow-on microgrant process, including guidance, application review, award documentation, monitoring, deliverable tracking, and closeout.
• Coordinate short-term consultants, speakers, reviewers, and subject-matter experts as needed.

• Work with EF staff to implement the STRIVE Performance Monitoring Plan and collect data aligned with ECA MODE indicators and EF custom indicators.
• Track subrecipient outputs and outcomes, including new or advanced partnerships, program models, strategic plans, student mobility pathways, microgrant deliverables, and resource dissemination.
• Support data collection through surveys, subrecipient reports, forum evaluations, technical assistance records, and follow-up surveys.
• Use findings to inform adaptive management, technical assistance, peer learning, and ECA reporting.

• Bachelo…