The Senior Associate, Coffee Representative, South America, will drive efforts to improve the experience of our programs for our coffee sector stakeholders within the region and strengthen our value proposition for them.

This role will have the responsibility of advising on the coffee sector plan and provide recommendations for impactful strategies towards sector transformation. This Representative will identify and leverage concrete market opportunities that accelerate our environmental, social, and economic impact.

To execute this work, they will coordinate closely with the global coffee lead, country directors within South America and the Customer Partner Support team to develop deep collaborative bonds as well as with colleagues in other locations and functional areas such as S&A, Customer Success, Markets, Supply Chain Excellence, Communications, Themes and other departments per needed.

Other responsibilities will include support to the enhancement of South America network, acting as account manager when needed for key regional partners, and supporting certification related projects development.

Responsibilities:

• The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviours we demonstrate;

Strategic and technical excellence:

• Develop a proposal for a more integrated approach for the coffee sector to enhance our value proposition in South American countries.
• Serve as the representative for RA’s field-related coffee sector transformation work, within the region. This work will be carried out in close coordination with regional staff and global counterparts.
• Propose innovative tools and approaches for coffee sector interventions.
• Provide strategic advice to the country directors and staff in the South America region to support integration of coffee sector priorities into country strategies and plans, and donor funded initiatives.
• Facilitate that all relevant staff have easy access to, and understand how to apply, global and regional approaches and tools for coffee sector initiatives.
• Identify and advise on risk related issues in the coffee sector.
• Deliver thought leadership and represent Rainforest Alliance from an origin perspective on coffee related issues (i.e. staying abreast of internal and external trends, delivering periodic internal presentations and webinars to relevant teams).
• Facilitate and coordinate access to data from certification programs, promoting horizontal and vertical information flow, and providing technical support to staff when requested;
• Facilitate quarterly cross-functional sector working group review meetings within the region.

Advocacy and external engagement:

• Support the Advocacy department on coffee risks and other needs per requested;
• Cultivate and maintain results-based partnerships with a subset of strategic coffee sector partners (companies, unions, government, NGOs, others.), and function as RA representative in selected regional and global multi-stakeholder fora.

Business development and fundraising:

• Contribute strategic advisory and technical reviews to writing and budgeting of fundraising proposals, with a specific focus on securing the support of coffee related partners and addressing their critical needs within the region;
• When required support lead writers for coffee related content on selected proposals and donor reports;
• Proactively identify funding opportunities and cultivate long-term relationships with senior leads and decision makers from selected regional-level intergovernmental organizations, companies, NGO partners, aid agencies and other donors;
• Act as account manager when needed for some regional or local accounts;
• Other tasks as assigned by supervisor.