About Us
Agriculture is the key to unlocking a better future for billions of people. But while rural families sustain the world, they struggle to sustain themselves. At the same time, they face increasingly urgent challenges, from volatile crop prices to extreme weather.
Root Capital is an impact investor that provides financing and business training to agricultural enterprises in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Since 1999, we have loaned over $2B to more than 800 businesses that are too big for microloans but too small for commercial lenders, and have trained more than twice as many businesses. As these businesses succeed and scale, they become engines of impact for local communities, raising incomes, creating jobs, expanding opportunities for women and young people, preserving nature, and building rural prosperity.
Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Root Capital has more than 180 employees operating in more than a dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast.
Position Overview
The Account Specialist, Institutional Partnerships (IP) is a team-wide systems and operations role supporting the Institutional Partnerships team’s Primary Relationship Manager (PRM) group, which are the team members responsible for managing relationships with Root Capital’s funders. The Specialist owns the operational backbone that keeps the team’s moves-management practice and business development efforts organized, consistent, and well-coordinated across the full portfolio of institutional funder accounts (e.g., corporates, foundations, public agencies).
This includes two core functions: (1) systems and data stewardship — applying the team’s logging decision tree consistently across all accounts, tagging and correcting entries, tracking progress against lead indicator targets, running regular Salesforce audits, and using this vantage point to flag funders and actions that need attention; and (2) business development support — conducting prospect and market research and preparing meeting briefs for PRM-led external engagements, and coordinating logistics for team travel and conferences, including building master lists of relevant accounts by geography and relationship status, assigning and tracking outreach ownership, and associated follow up. This cross-portfolio vantage point lets the Specialist surface trends and opportunities that individual PRMs, focused on their own book, can’t easily see themselves.
Duties and Responsibilities
Purpose (25%)
- Own Salesforce logging quality across all IP accounts: apply the team’s logging decision tree to classify interactions correctly (Prospect Evaluation, Qualifying Actions, Solicitation Actions, Stewardship, Touch Point) and correct misclassified entries.
- Support tracking of team-wide progress against monthly/quarterly lead indicator targets and flag gaps to PRMs.
- Analyze account activity across all portfolios to identify funders/prospects with no recent engagement, upcoming lapses, or unrealized potential, and flag these for business development follow-up.
- Conduct prospect and market research in support of PRMs across the team, prepare funder profiles, and log/tag findings in Salesforce and Box.
- Conduct monthly audits of IP Accounts and Opportunities in Salesforce to identify data gaps or inaccuracies; recommend system and process improvements.
Engagement (30%)
- Prepare meeting briefs and background research for PRM-led external engagements (per PRM direction), and for high-level solicitations involving senior staff or the CEO.
- Build master lists of relevant prospects and partners ahead of team travel, conferences, or convenings to identify business development opportunities tied to the trip. This includes:
- Coordinating meeting logistics for these engagements: scheduling, assembling meeting briefs, and confirming attendees.
- Coordinate and track who owns outreach for each account (e.g., CEO direct outreach vs. relationship-owner outreach), ensuring assignments are clear and nothing falls through the cracks.
- Track post-trip follow-through: thank-you notes sent, next steps and open items logged, and outstanding actions surfaced to the relevant PRM.
- Engage as internal liaison with Development Operations, Grants Management, and Finance.
- Organize agendas for regular IP meetings with other divisions/teams; log and tag notes from internal strategy meetings, and extract/track resulting to-dos in Trello.
- Present recommendations to team leaders and colleagues on systems and process improvements.
Delivery (45%)
- Maintain the IP knowledge base/content tracker, BOX folders up to date, the IP intranet page.
- Generate portfolio-wide insight reports (e.g., pipeline health, stalled accounts, lead indicator trends, conference/travel ROI) for team and leadership use.
- Prepare and organize materials, agendas, and briefing packets for external meetings and conferences.
- Undertake special assignments as directed.
Required Skills and Experience
- 4–6 years of experience in operations, project coordination, or CRM/database administration, gained in a nonprofit, development, or client-service-focused environment.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.
- Advanced proficiency with complex CRM databases (Salesforce preferred), including data entry, usage, reporting, and analysis; comfort with project/workflow tools (e.g., Trello) is a plus.
- Comfort working with quantitative and qualitative data, with the ability to construct and interpret relevant narratives.
- Demonstrated research skills — prospect, market, and sector research — and the ability to synthesize findings into usable funder intelligence and concise briefing materials.
- Experience coordinating logistics for travel, conferences, or multi-stakeholder events, including scheduling, materials preparation, and follow-through tracking.
- Comfortable applying a defined framework or taxonomy consistently across a high volume of records, with strong attention to detail.
- Ability to identify and create processes that support effective partnerships and team operations.
- Ability to respond quickly to shifting short-term priorities while managing multiple concurrent projects independently and meeting tight deadlines.
- Exceptional written communication skills and solid verbal presentation skills.
- Commitment and passion for mission-based international development, including Root Capital’s focus on inclusive and sustainable economic development and rural resilience in low- and middle-income countries.
- Root Capital is a bilingual organization; Spanish proficiency (written and spoken) is a plus but not critical to the role. Advanced English proficiency is required.
- Enthusiasm for diverse, multicultural, and global/multi-location work environments, with a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Proactive approach to problem-solving with demonstrated decision-making capabilities.
- Skilled in effectively working and communicating within remote teams.
- Committed to practicing and supporting wellbeing and work-home life balance.
- Applicants must be authorized to work in a Western Hemisphere country where Root Capital has operations: United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru.
Root Capital provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, active military or veteran status, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy (which includes pregnancy, childbirth, medical conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth, and breastfeeding and expressing breast milk), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by law. Root Capital is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that upholds our leadership principles of accountability, empowerment, equity, integrity, service, and transparency.
