Programme Director - Communications & Culture

Our Guiding Star: Building Resilience QCF was established in 2019 by the founders of Quadrature Capital https://quadrature.ai/, Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, out of a recognition of the persistent poverty, inequality, and human suffering that shape our societies. Our founders were already active philanthropists in these areas, and came to understand how climate would compound them, driving food insecurity, deepening displacement, and pushing the most vulnerable into crisis. This realisation led them to establish QCF with a focus on climate as the defining challenge of our time. In 2025, the founders and QCF decided to bring the Foundation's climate funding together with other private philanthropic funding streams across poverty, inequality and human suffering under an expanded Foundation remit. QCF’s updated mandate is based on our core belief: that acute human suffering now, and cascading climate risks ahead, are interconnected crises that threaten the stability of societies everywhere. This demands action both downstream, to address poverty and inequality and help people secure their lives and dignity today; and upstream, to build the conditions that make lasting climate and societal transformation possible and durable for tomorrow. This understanding frames the vision of the Foundation: “A just and resilient world, where those most affected by intersecting crises have the power to shape their own futures.” We focus on three interconnected challenges that undermine resilience. - Human security; Protecting survival and dignity in the face of acute threats, including conflict, natural disasters and climate shocks. - Poverty and inequality; Addressing persistent economic exclusion and unequal access to opportunity, by tackling the structural drivers of injustice. - Climate risk; Responding to escalating threats to lives and livelihoods from climate impacts, which will intensify without a fast, fair transition. Our purpose is to trust and resource those closest to the work to: - Secure today - securing the survival and dignity of those in conditions of acute vulnerability, through urgent poverty and humanitarian response; and - Transform tomorrow – creating the enabling conditions for a just, low-carbon and resilient future. Why Communications and Culture The portfolio is concerned not simply with communications, but with narrative power: who has the resources, institutions, cultural legitimacy and distribution infrastructure to shape how societies understand themselves, the challenges they face and the futures they believe are possible. It seeks to strengthen the ability of communities, movements, media and cultural actors to create knowledge and culture, reach audiences and participate in shaping public discourse. QCF funds globally, with priority geographies in Sub-Saharan Africa and in the UK and EU. This focus reflects both where climate, poverty and inequality risks are acute, and where media, policy, financial and cultural power shape outcomes beyond national borders. The portfolio works across these connections, supporting those closest to the work to shape narratives, evidence and cultural futures on their own terms. This requires attention not only to where resources flow, but to whose knowledge, languages, cultural forms and ways of communicating are recognised and able to travel. The portfolio therefore supports context-rooted narrative ecosystems that are deeply grounded in place while connected to wider and global ecosystems, rather than assuming a single model of how social and cultural change happens. Five concerns sit at the heart of the portfolio: 1. Who can produce knowledge and culture, and whose stories are heard and believed. 2. Who has access to audiences and distribution, and which languages and knowledge systems are visible. 3. Who holds the cultural and institutional power to influence what societies understand as normal, desirable and possible. 4. How media, cultural and information environments; not individual messages or campaigns, produce, legitimise and circulate meaning. 5. How technology and AI are reshaping narrative and informational power, including whose knowledge and cultural production are represented in emerging information infrastructures. The Role QCF is looking for a Programme Director for Communications and Culture who can be the senior strategic leader responsible for shaping one of QCF’s most cross-cutting and boundary-pushing portfolios; strengthening the narrative, cultural and information environments required for durable systems change and a more equitable distribution of narrative power. At a time of increasingly fragmented democratic discourse, accelerating misinformation, and contested climate and social transitions, the role stewards long-horizon investments in communications, culture and narrative work. The role carries an explicit mandate to support a more equitable distribution of narrative power. The PD will resource movements, media, artists, cultural and creative institutions and other narrative actors in Sub-Saharan Africa and other Global South contexts to reach audiences on their own editorial and artistic terms, and use QCF’s position in the UK and EU to support the conditions in which those perspectives are more visible, better resourced and more influential in public, media and policy discourse globally. The culture dimension is a field investment in its own right, not an adjunct to communications and advocacy campaigns. It includes field-building work that strengthens the long-term capacity, infrastructure independence and organising power of artists, cultural institutions and creative ecosystems, and supports cultural practitioners not only to contest harmful narratives but to expand social imagination: creating space for communities and publics to imagine different futures around inequality, climate, technology, dignity, rights and collective wellbeing. The PD will shape this portfolio adaptively over time, working with partners and evidence to decide where QCF should deepen, experiment, convene or step back. The role does not require mastery of every sub-field from the outset, but it does require the judgement and humility to build the right relationships, learn quickly and resource expertise close to the work. The PD is supported in portfolio delivery by a dedicated Programme Manager who leads operational execution, due diligence, delivery rhythms and compliance. The role reports to a Managing Director and involves regular international travel across the portfolio’s priority geographies, including sustained time in the regions it serves. The accountabilities below set out what that means in practice. Key accountabilities (the WHAT) 1. Set the portfolio strategy and mandate - Define QCF’s Communications and Culture strategy and its contribution to the Foundation’s resilience mandate, working with the Managing Directors, Impact & Insights and portfolio colleagues to agree scope, outcomes, priorities and boundaries. - Shape strategic priorities through portfolio hypotheses and learning questions, investing across movements, narrative power, culture, media, information ecosystems, distribution, policy, research and innovation pathways where QCF can add distinctive value. - Set and continuously refine portfolio boundaries, making evidence-informed decisions about what to prioritise, sustain, adapt or wind down, in close dialogue with partners and in service of QCF’s vision and long-term impact. - Hold the portfolio’s geographic balance across Sub-Saharan Africa, the UK, EU and global work, deliberately shifting resource and decision-making power towards African and other Global South institutions through direct funding relationships, flexible support and investment in the infrastructure that makes locally led funding practical at scale. - Prepare clear, decision-ready strategy and capital-allocation papers for Executive and Trustee discussion, including options, assumptions, resource implications and the case for QCF’s additionality. 2. Build and actively manage the portfolio - Further build and steward a multi-year, nine-figure portfolio of predominantly grant capital, with selective use of investment capital, balancing long-term keystone commitments with experimentation and risk-taking. - Take senior accountability for portfolio outcomes, partner selection, grant recommendations, capital allocation and material strategic trade-offs within QCF’s governance framework. - Set clear criteria to start, continue, adapt, scale or stop commitments, and work with the Programme Manager, Finance, Legal and Portfolio Operations to ensure decisions are executed with proportionate diligence and reliable oversight. - Test and resource generative, emergent and unproven approaches, creating room for experimentation where conventional evidence is not yet available but the potential for learning and field development is strong. - Contribute to QCF’s broader catalytic capital and innovation programme, including shared approaches to sourcing, diligence, risk assessment and learning, and support investment colleagues with sector expertise in communications and culture. 3. Steward ecosystems, partnerships and narrative power - Build and maintain trust-based, humble partnerships across the ecosystem, ensuring QCF complements rather than duplicates existing efforts and fills agreed gaps. - Steward relationships with creative and cultural partners on terms that protect artistic independence, holding a clear line between resourcing culture and directing it, and resisting the instrumentalisation of artists as messengers. - Support mutually beneficial relationships between movements, advocacy organisations, media partners and cultural practitioners, ensuring narrative strategy is co-created and cultural partners are not treated as downstream messengers for predetermined agendas. - Strengthen the narrative capacity of movements and communities to tell their own stories and shape public understanding on their own terms. - Work with other funders operating in these fields to identify shared opportunities and complementary roles, avoiding duplication and resisting the pull to make QCF the centre of coalitions led by others. 4. Build the culture, media and distribution field - Build the culture side of the portfolio as a discipline of investment in its own right rather than an adjunct to communications, investing in artists, culture bearers, producers, institutions, convenings, distribution systems and field-building initiatives, and developing QCF’s understanding of how cultural production, heritage, language, popular culture and creative ecosystems shape identity, belonging, social imagination and what publics believe is normal, desirable and possible. - Develop movement- and field-building strategies that strengthen the long-term capacity of artists, culture bearers and creative institutions to participate in social change on their own terms, including through skills, infrastructure, networks, resources and spaces for experimentation. - Strengthen plural, independent and resilient media and information ecosystems, including independent newsrooms, investigative networks and local, language-diverse media, and support work that strengthens understanding of how media systems, incentives and distribution shape public narratives. - Develop a distinctive approach to narrative distribution, identifying and investing in the infrastructure that enables locally rooted stories, ideas, knowledge and cultural production to reach wider publics — including through community media, creator networks, translation and localisation, syndication, audience development, cultural institutions, entertainment, digital platforms and emerging forms of distribution — and to move across audiences, languages, geographies and institutions. - Support heritage, language and knowledge systems, including oral tradition, archives, memory institutions, community-held knowledge and work in African and other non-dominant languages. - Strengthen plural, trustworthy and resilient information environments, including understanding and responding to the structural conditions that shape what information people encounter, trust and share; addressing mis- and disinformation where information harms climate action, civic space or public trust; and investing in the institutions and infrastructure that enable communities to access reliable, accurate and locally relevant information. - Support field-building, research, experimentation and learning across the portfolio, connecting work on narrative power, culture, media, information and infrastructure into a coherent whole, including identifying where QCF can strengthen shared capacity, support experimentation, generate learning and ensure that different parts of the ecosystem reinforce one another over time. - Develop QCF’s understanding of how emerging technologies, including AI, are reshaping media, culture and information ecosystems — including information discovery and distribution, and knowledge systems — and identify opportunities to support more equitable participation, representation and access within these emerging systems. 5. Make evidence and learning integral to strategy - Lead the portfolio’s learning agenda, drawing on evidence, partner insight and research to inform strategic adaptation. - Embed learning and feedback loops across the portfolio, so that insight from practice shapes strategy and funding decisions. - Resource evidence generated in and by the regions the portfolio serves — Sub-Saharan African research institutions, audience-research firms, journalists and cultural practitioners producing analysis of their own contexts. - Develop credible approaches to assessing cultural and narrative change over long horizons, accepting the limits of attribution and valuing qualitative, community-held and artistic forms of evidence alongside quantitative measures. - Work with colleagues across QCF to combine partner evidence, research and ecosystem learning into a shared evidence base. 6. Lead the team, represent QCF and contribute to the whole - Lead a small but high-performing portfolio team, setting clear direction, developing talent, coaching, and managing performance. - Represent QCF externally as a values-driven, partner-first ambassador, participating in key networks, coalitions and dialogues, and influencing in ways that amplify partner voices rather than substituting for them. - Build trust-based relationships with leaders across civil society, governments, multilaterals, research institutions, philanthropy, and the media, cultural and creative sectors — including African regional bodies and pan-African networks, UK and European institutions, and cultural institutions in both regions. - Help strengthen the wider field of narrative and cultural philanthropy by supporting collaboration, shared infrastructure and learning among funders, movements, media and cultural actors, represent QCF in regional philanthropic, media and cultural fora across Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, and work to shift peer funder practice towards direct, flexible, locally led funding of media and culture. - Provide leadership at the intersections between portfolios, working in generous and non-territorial ways to advance shared outcomes, and engaging constructively in resource allocation decisions that best serve the mission. - Act as a senior enterprise leader within QCF, contributing expertise, judgement and capacity beyond the boundaries of the portfolio, and sharing responsibility for embedding a culture of agility, trust, performance and care. - Ensure compliance, risk management and best practice in charitable funding, and navigate the varied and sometimes restrictive regimes governing media, civil society, artistic expression and foreign funding across the countries where partners operate. - Model an inclusive way of working across time zones, languages and contexts, so that partners and colleagues outside the Foundation’s home geography experience the same access, influence and quality of relationship. Ways of working (the HOW) Judgement under uncertainty - Makes sound strategic choices where evidence is incomplete, including where to concentrate capital, which parts of the field to back and when to decline an attractive but unfocused opportunity. - Strong political antennae: understands how media, cultural, regulatory and political incentives shape outcomes across multiple jurisdictions, including contexts where press freedom, civic space or artistic expression is under pressure. - Holds the tension between strategic ambition and the practical realities of delivery, keeping decisions grounded in partner experience and operational feasibility. - Balances conviction and openness, makes trade-offs explicit and revises a position when context or evidence changes. - Comfortable making judgements using imperfect information, and adjusting strategy in response to evidence, partner feedback and shifting external conditions. - Understands how to constructively challenge assumptions, surface risks, and create the conditions for high-quality delivery. Learning agility - Sophisticated systems thinker who understands how media, culture, politics, technology and information environments interact to shape public understanding, social norms and resilience, and translates this into portfolio design across different contexts. - Champions and integrates diverse ways of knowing, recognising the legitimacy of community-held, oral, indigenous and artistic knowledge traditions alongside academic and technical expertise. - Can move across media, culture, narrative strategy, information ecosystems and distribution without claiming equal depth in every sub-field, and resources expertise close to the work. - Curious, humble, and open to learning, with the ability to synthesise insight across programmes and integrate it into strategic decision-making; invites challenge and uses feedback to improve assumptions, choices and ways of working. Humility and partner mindset - Builds trust across different institutional, cultural, linguistic and political settings; listens carefully to partners and those affected by decisions. - Commitment to QCF’s partner-led, power-shifting approach, demonstrated through high relational intelligence, humility and care in partnership, recognising QCF’s role as an enabler and collaborator rather than a driver. - Skilled at building deep, trust-based relationships with a wide range of stakeholders including senior executives, government leaders, foundation peers, civil society actors, journalists, artists and cultural leaders, across multiple regions and cultural contexts. - Recognises the power that comes with grant capital and public platform, and works in ways that strengthen partner leadership and protect editorial and artistic independence. - Holds a clear sense of QCF’s role as enabler and collaborator rather than driver, with awareness of power, privilege and bias within the systems in which we operate. - Works credibly across languages and cultural registers, or is committed to a funding practice that does not default to English. - Self-aware, resilient, and comfortable with ambiguity, able to sustain focus and energy through complexity and change. Delivery discipline and ownership - Owns strategy through to consequential grant decisions, with clear priorities, decision points and follow-through. - Stewards complex, multi-year, multi-partner portfolios across more than one country, legal environment or regulatory context. - Sets ambitious but feasible direction and holds reliable oversight of capital, risk, capacity and partner commitments, working closely with the Programme Manager on delivery. - Works hands-on at senior level when needed while delegating delivery systems and operational coordination appropriately. - Sets clear expectations, gives and receives meaningful feedback, and supports others to thrive. Clarity, synthesis and communication - Makes complex narrative, cultural and information-system issues intelligible to partners, colleagues, executives and Trustees. - Writes persuasive, evidence-grounded strategy and decision papers that set out options, uncertainty and recommended action. - Skilled at making meaning from complexity and sharing learning generously across the organisation, with senior leaders and with partners. - Represents an institution credibly at the most senior external levels, amplifying partner voices rather than substituting for them. Organisation-first mindset - Thinks beyond the portfolio, looking for connections with thematic and regional work and sharing insight and relationships generously. - Confident working in high-collaboration, high-interdependence environments where no portfolio is autonomous. - Builds reusable capability within QCF rather than concentrating knowledge and influence in one person. - Contributes to an adaptive, accountable and learning-driven organisation. What you’ll bring - Deep commitment to QCF’s vision of a just and resilient world, alongside a strategic understanding of the factors shaping resilience, poverty, inequality, human security and climate: with depth in one or more areas and breadth across the whole. - Commitment to QCF’s partner-led, power-shifting approach, demonstrated through high relational intelligence, humility and care in partnership, and awareness of power, privilege and bias within the systems in which we operate. - Senior leadership experience at director level or equivalent across communications, media, narrative strategy, culture or adjacent systems-change fields, with substantive depth in at least one relevant domain. - Demonstrated ability to operate as a portfolio architect and ecosystem builder, making strategic choices across several of: advocacy, movements, media, narrative strategy, popular culture, creative industries, heritage and language, and information ecosystems. - Track record of stewarding complex, multi-year, multi-partner portfolios, ideally across more than one country, legal environment or regulatory context, and of making disciplined decisions about what to fund, sustain, adapt and stop. - Credibility with partners beyond philanthropy, including fluency in how media, culture or creative work is commissioned, produced, distributed, financed, organised and sustained, and understanding of the structural barriers that determine whose work reaches audiences. - Working knowledge of media and cultural markets in at least one priority geography, with the curiosity and capacity to build deeper fluency across the wider portfolio. - Experience designing or supporting programmes that build the capacity, networks or infrastructure of artists, cultural organisations or creative fields, while respecting artistic independence and the intrinsic value of cultural work. - Understanding of Sub-Saharan Africa’s political, media and cultural landscapes, gained through lived experience, work based in the region, or sustained partnership with African institutions, alongside the ability to work with UK and EU media, policy and cultural systems. Candidates based in or with deep roots in Sub-Saharan Africa and other Global South contexts are strongly encouraged to apply. - Experience building and leading small, senior teams, with a genuine commitment to developing others, and experience engaging senior leadership and boards on portfolio performance, strategic direction, risks and emerging opportunities. - Ability to operate as an enterprise leader: collaborative, non-territorial, and comfortable sharing credit and resources across a matrixed organisation. - Excellent written and verbal communication, with the judgement to represent an institution credibly at the most senior external levels.