program officer

senior administrative assistant

senior program officer

senior advisor

philanthropy manager

Mercy Corps

A typical day at work

Partnering with regional and country leaders across time zones to plan/track deployment waves, align on process changes, and remove blockers. My day mixed stakeholder briefings, readiness checks (data, roles, integrations), training/enablement huddles, and cutover planning with IT, Procurement, and Finance.

What I learned

How to drive a complex, multi-country SaaS rollout in a mission-driven NGO—balancing standardization with local realities. I deepened skills in global stakeholder management, change communications, training design, data/governance alignment, and benefits tracking for procurement transformation.

Management

Supportive and engaged. Leaders were accessible, transparent on goals and risks, and empowered teams to make decisions close to the work. Clear sponsorship accelerated adoption and kept the program focused on outcomes.

Workplace culture

Mission-led, collaborative, and high-trust. Colleagues were talented, driven, and generous with expertise. The culture values learning, inclusion, and practical problem-solving—especially important when coordinating across diverse countries and operating contexts.

Hardest part of the job

Coordinating across many time zones and operating environments while maintaining consistent processes and controls (e.g., supplier data, approval flows, and policy alignment) without overburdening field teams.

Most enjoyable part of the job

Partnering with incredible colleagues worldwide and seeing tangible impact—simpler buying experiences, better spend visibility, and stronger controls. The sense of shared purpose made the work energizing.

Demonstrated experience on sustainable development , market systems development, Peace building initiatives, humanitarian , recovery and DRR  or resilience building projects/program, excellent knowledge of and experience with humanitarian guideline ,sphere standards and principles, excellent knowledge and skills of project cycle management, demonstrated program management and coordination skills, sound knowledge and practical experience in facilitating  in assisting in formulation, planning ,implementing, monitoring and evaluation of development programs and projects , ability to work in a multicultural ,multi-ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relationship with people of different national and cultural background, sound experience in leading and coordinating a complex program of various consortia composed of diverse partnership with excellent program management and coordinating skills, demonstrated experience in coaching, conducting workshops and community meeting facilitation  and excellent report writing skills.

Its starts like any other normal day at MC, at office by 8:00am, meeting for security updates, then to the field and out of office at 5:00pm.
Learnt very new market facilitation approaches different from direct service delivery for sustainability and ownership of projects by beneficiaries in the communities. Community mobilisation, advocacy, capacity building and training were learnt. Project planning and management, monitoring and evaluation.
A multi-cultural interaction of different co-workers from different backgrounds.
The hardest part of my job is the marketing facilitation approach contrary to the usual direct facilitation/donation approach. Its very hard to convince the different stakeholders and hence taking alot of time to produce result.
Most enjoyable in that i meet a lot of people in different capacities and position as partners and stakeholders hence a lot more learning.

I love working with the stuff since they are very creative , determined and well organised . 

I used to support mentees to develop their 3-month implementation plan and agree on the final draft of the plan.
 I used to spend 4  hours per week with each group of mentees (one to one mentoring) or (group of mentees) to monitor their progress, analyze their efficiency and guide them of how to develop their online profiles in freelancing websites, apply for and win online bids from freelancing websites, help them to properly communicate with prospective clients,highlight and encourage opportunities where freelancers can work in groups rather than individuals, answer questions raised by mentees, providing new techniques for generation of income online within or out of freelancing platforms, report on any issues affecting the successful implementation of the project and finally,supporting and help mentees and follow-up them online (e.g. Facebook groups\Skype).

I volunteer at Mercy Corp Northwest in downtown Portland, Oregon, every Thursday of the week, providing backup office services such as data entry into Mercy Corps' online internal software, recording clientele attendance to classes Mercy Corps provides to clients who wish to begin their own small businesses. I also help with filing client information and with any small projects for which any workers at Mercy Corps might need my help. There is absolutely no difficulty in performing these tasks and I am always happy to help any of the people working at Mercy Corps, and as stated in the Summary above, everyone at Mercy Corps is very accomodating and very personable, and I look forward to helping them when every Thursday comes along.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The colleagues are A-class. The best of the best, both in their humanity, openness to help as well as their expertise.  There is a great talent pool at MC. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
I would not call it stressful, but what you do on a daily will change and sometimes the donor turn around can be quick, but even in those moments, the oneness of the colleagues helps. It's great team work. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The best work-lifw balance, no pressure to be on camera for meetings, great managers and management. It's all great. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
This is subjective to your role.

Excellent work place with programatic areas with good theory of change for coommunity development. I have System change approch for Economic and Market development project. Well experienced seniour advisors is what I like most in MC. Emergency sition over laps with development is the harderst prt of my job . Cosely working with private and government sector was the most enjoable part of my experiance

Work here if you can.  It is an amazing non profit organization doing important humanitarian work all over the country.  You will work with very smart, forwarded thinking individuals.  You will learn so much and will become better person while working here and beyond.   Like most non profits, compensation is not why you work here.  

Mercy Corps was inconsistent in it treatment of staff, both international as well as national. Many of the contractual obligations were not met because of inexperience staff and the poor relationship with the donor.

The day begins at 8:00am and closes at 5:00pm and staff are free to hang out with colleagues. there is freedom of interaction with leadership and staff. Mercycorps has a digital library that encouraged my learning. lots of reading material. Lots of impact evaluations are conducted and this gave me a hands-on experience.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Program officer 4 salaries reported	$59,500 per year
Senior administrative assistant 4 salaries reported	$48,875 per year
Senior program officer 3 salaries reported	$74,667 per year
Senior advisor 3 salaries reported	$90,000 per year
Philanthropy manager 2 salaries reported	$125,000 per year

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