The Opportunity
As a key member of SmartStart’s executive leadership team, the Chief of Staff will serve as a senior strategic extension of the CEO - increasing the CEO’s effectiveness, leverage and capacity while providing accountable leadership for institutional capabilities that protect, enable and extend SmartStart.
The role will enable the CEO to focus increasingly on vision, strategic direction, major strategic bets, Board leadership, highest-level government and funder relationships, external influence and SmartStart’s future positioning, while ensuring the CEO’s strategic agenda is structured, supported, translated and followed through.
The Chief of Staff will lead the Office of the CEO and provide executive oversight of CEO leverage and strategic agenda; Legal and Governance; Enterprise Operations and Administration; and Global Expansion exploration and readiness. The role creates leverage rather than dependency and must not become a parallel centre of execution.
For a high-judgement, low-ego executive leader, this is an opportunity to work at the centre of a mission-led organisation navigating significant growth and transformation - helping turn complexity into clarity while protecting the space for others to lead.
Chief of Staff - Job Specification
Purpose
To serve as a senior strategic extension of the CEO, increasing the CEO’s effectiveness, leverage and capacity while providing accountable leadership for the institutional capabilities that protect, enable and extend SmartStart. The Chief of Staff will strengthen the CEO’s ability to lead from her distinctive strengths in vision, systems leadership, external influence, relationships and strategic direction by bringing exceptional internal structure, synthesis, prioritisation, decision discipline and follow-through.
What You Will Help Us Achieve
As part of SmartStart’s executive leadership team, you will:
-
Increase CEO leverage and strategic effectiveness - helping the CEO focus attention on the work only the CEO can do while translating emerging thinking into structured options and organisational implications. - Create disciplined strategic follow-through - ensuring CEO decisions and commitments translate into clear ownership, routing, sequencing and closure without absorbing accountability that belongs elsewhere.
- Strengthen executive governance and institutional integrity - improving clarity on decision authorities, delegated authority, reserved matters, escalation and executive forum effectiveness.
- Steward Legal, Governance and Enterprise Operations - ensuring fit-for-purpose institutional capability, strong risk escalation and efficient, well-governed corporate support.
- Enable the Board and executive agenda - ensuring decision-ready preparation, strong coordination and clear connection between Board priorities and accountable executives.
- Explore future growth responsibly - leading global expansion exploration and readiness while ensuring major market-entry decisions remain with the CEO and Board.
- Protect organisational accountability - working closely with the MD, CFO, People & Organisational Capability and functional leaders without becoming a gatekeeper, proxy CEO or catch-all owner of unassigned work.
The Leader We Are Looking For
- We are looking for an exceptional executive partner with the judgement, discretion and organisational maturity to operate in close proximity to the CEO without making that proximity a source of status or power.
- You will be a structured thinker who can turn ambiguity and complexity into clear choices, sequencing and ownership - bringing analysis, options and recommendations rather than repeatedly escalating unprocessed problems.
- You will have the constructive courage to challenge privately when required, the discipline to align behind decisions once made, and the relational intelligence to retain credibility across EXCO, the Board and the wider organisation.
- You will be comfortable operating across strategy, governance, legal and institutional operations, with enough range to connect disciplines while respecting specialist judgement and clear role boundaries.
- Most importantly, you will bring high agency, low ego, non-defensiveness and a deep commitment to SmartStart’s mission - creating calm, structure and closure when pace, complexity or tension increases.
CEO Leverage & Strategic Agenda
- Act as a trusted strategic partner, adviser and extension of the CEO, helping prioritise strategic attention, engagements, interventions and decisions.
- Translate emerging CEO thinking into structured options and test strategic ideas for operational implications, dependencies, sequencing and organisational readiness without taking over execution.
- Surface competing priorities, alternative perspectives, material risks and inconvenient information in a clear, evidence-based and solution-oriented form.
- Create disciplined feedback loops so the CEO can see whether strategic decisions have landed as intended, including when the pace or volume of change risks exceeding absorptive capacity.
- Lead a highly effective Office of the CEO and coordinate the CEO’s strategic agenda, including high-quality preparation for critical internal, Board and external engagements.
- Translate CEO decisions and commitments into clear ownership, routing and follow-through, ensuring matters are appropriately triaged between CEO, MD, CFO and functional leadership.
- Coordinate a small number of CEO-sponsored, time-bound strategic initiatives and transition sustained execution to the appropriate owner.
- Help institutionalise CEO insight and relationships into organisational systems and capability rather than allowing SmartStart to rely excessively on individual leadership.
Executive Governance, Legal & Institutional Integrity
- Support the design and effectiveness of SmartStart’s executive governance architecture, including clarity on decision authorities, delegated authority, reserved matters and escalation.
- Ensure executive forums are appropriately constituted, focused on the right level of questions and disciplined in tracking material decisions and commitments to closure.
- Maintain clear boundaries between CEO, MD, CFO, Chief of Staff and functional leadership accountabilities.
- Provide executive stewardship of SmartStart’s legal, regulatory and corporate governance capability, ensuring access to appropriate specialist legal advice and protecting independent professional judgement.
- Oversee the organisational approach to legal risk, material contracts, regulatory compliance and governance frameworks, ensuring significant risks are identified, escalated and managed.
- Coordinate Legal with People & Organisational Capability on employment-law and people-policy interfaces, and with Finance on commercial, procurement and financial-risk interfaces.
Enterprise Operations, Board Enablement & Future Readiness
-
Provide executive ownership of core institutional administration and corporate operational support, setting fit-for-purpose standards, systems and service expectations. - Ensure corporate operational processes are efficient, appropriately governed, simplified and fit for scale, with relevant procurement governance coordinated while financial controls remain with Finance.
- Coordinate the CEO’s Board agenda and decision-ready preparation of strategic Board materials, connecting Board priorities, decisions and actions to accountable executives.
- Coordinate with the CFO on financial, Audit & Risk and funder-assurance matters and help ensure Board engagement remains appropriately strategic rather than unnecessarily operational.
- Lead exploration and institutional readiness for potential expansion beyond South Africa, including early market, institutional, legal, governance and operating-model assessments.
- Coordinate cross-functional expertise and produce decision-quality information for CEO and Board consideration, developing appropriate replication, partnership and market-entry guardrails.
- Own exploration and readiness rather than unilateral market entry; major entry decisions remain CEO/Board reserved decisions and sustained execution transfers to appropriate operating leadership.
- Act as a strategic thought partner to the CEO on SmartStart’s continued operating-model and institutional evolution, surfacing structural barriers and supporting major changes requiring CEO sponsorship.
- Work closely with the MD and People & Organisational Capability leadership while respecting their execution and specialist accountabilities.
Executive Partnership & Leadership Standard
- Challenge the CEO constructively when required, and align behind decisions once made.
- Bring analysis, options and recommendations; maintain appropriate alignment without excessive permission-seeking.
- Use proximity to the CEO as a responsibility, not as organisational status or power, and maintain credibility across EXCO and the organisation.
- Exercise significant influence without becoming territorial, factional, bureaucratic or a gatekeeper.
- Lead portfolio resources and senior professionals with clear accountability, discretion and strong judgment.
- Create calm, structure and closure when pace, complexity or tension increases
- Model high agency, simplification, adaptive pace and disciplined follow-through.
- Protect clear accountability: the MD owns enterprise execution; the CFO owns financial stewardship; People & Organisational Capability owns people strategy and organisational capability; functional leaders retain specialist mandates.
Requirements
Qualifications & Experience
- Relevant postgraduate qualification or equivalent senior professional experience in strategy, business, law, governance, public policy, organisational leadership or a related field.
- Significant senior leadership experience in a complex, mission-led, public-interest or multi-stakeholder environment.
- Demonstrated experience advising and working closely with CEOs or senior executives, with strong experience in strategy, executive decision support and institutional governance.
- Demonstrated ability to lead across functions and disciplines without unnecessarily centralising authority, including experience working with Boards and/or senior governance structures.
- Strong understanding of organisational risk, governance and institutional accountability, with experience managing highly sensitive and confidential matters at executive level.
- Experience leading senior professionals and/or specialist portfolios. Exposure to legal/regulatory environments, government, philanthropy, development, social-impact ecosystems, international expansion or networked operating models is highly advantageous.
Specific Knowledge
- Strong understanding of executive governance, decision rights, delegated authority and institutional accountability.
- Strong strategic and organisational judgement, including the ability to assess dependencies, sequencing, risk and organisational readiness.
- Sufficient legal and governance literacy to steward specialist legal capability while respecting independent professional judgment.
- Understanding of Board governance, executive decision support and high-level stakeholder environments.
- Understanding of enterprise operations, administrative infrastructure and fit-for-scale institutional systems.
- Understanding of organisational transformation, operating-model evolution and the dynamics of complex change.
- Knowledge of multi-stakeholder, partnership-based or networked operating environments.
- Exposure to international expansion, market entry or multi-country organisations is advantageous.
- Experience within ECD, education, public systems or another social-impact environment is advantageous.
Skills and Competencies
- Exceptional executive judgement, discretion and ability to handle sensitive information.
- High agency and structured thinking, with the ability to move from issue to analysis to recommendation to action.
- Constructive courage and the ability to challenge senior leaders while retaining trust.
- Excellent communication, synthesis and interpersonal skills.
- Strong relational intelligence across CEO, EXCO, Board, partners and organisational contexts.
- Low ego, low territoriality and strong organisational neutrality.
- Excellent execution discipline, prioritisation and follow-through.
- Ability to simplify complexity and create structure without unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Non-defensiveness, learning agility and willingness to change position when evidence requires it.
- Ability to influence without formal authority and route work to the right accountable owner.
- Adaptive pace - able to move quickly while recognising when sense-making, alignment or absorption time is needed.
- Deep commitment to SmartStart’s mission and to increasing enterprise capacity.
Employment Equity
SmartStart is committed to employment equity, diversity and inclusion. Preference may be given to suitably qualified candidates from designated groups, in line with SmartStart's Employment Equity commitments and applicable legislation.
Benefits
Total Cost to Company (Medical Aid, Provident Fund & Risk Benefits)
