Senior Specialist, Advisory Services, Southeast Asia

Position Overview

Title:
Senior Specialist, Advisory Services, Southeast Asia

Reports to:
Director, Advisory Services, Southeast Asia

Industry:
Banking, Financial Services

Classification:
Full-time

Location:
Jakarta, Indonesia

Start Date:
Immediate

Position Summary

Women's World Banking is looking for an Advisory Services Sr. Specialist to join a forward thinking, high-performing, collaborative, agile, and fast-paced team focused on delivering innovative customer experiences, banking services and products that create business and customer value to serve low-income women.

You will support the Advisory Director in delivering human-centered, commercially viable solutions that contribute to systemic change across Southeast Asia's financial ecosystem. Rather than focusing on individual FSP engagements, your work will be part of a broader market-shaping and advocacy agenda aimed at strengthening the entire financial system for the greater good of women and MSMEs.

You will help design and scale solutions that enable financial service providers, fintechs, and ecosystem actors to better reach and serve low-income and women-led segments — while identifying policy, regulatory, and market barriers that restrict inclusion and innovation. Working closely with WWB's Policy and Research teams, you will translate these insights into evidence-based advocacy and collective action through industry associations, public–private coalitions, and regional dialogues.

This role is central to Women's World Banking's Southeast Asia strategic goals: to uplift the entire financial ecosystem by enabling inclusive innovation, strengthening responsible market infrastructure, and promoting equal economic opportunity for women and entrepreneurs across the region.

The ideal candidate has experience in financial services, fintech, or financial inclusion consulting, with a deep understanding of customer behavior, emerging technology (including AI-driven insights and digital public infrastructure), and climate-resilient or green finance business models. You're a strategic thinker, a creative problem-solver, and a strong collaborator eager to build solutions that make finance work for everyone — especially women.

Roles and Responsibilities

You will:

• Lead and support multiple advisory/solution projects activity in Southeast Asia simultaneously to achieve project deliverables in timely manner, independently and/or collaboratively as a team. The project activities include overall project planning, coordination and monitoring, research and analysis, ideation to generate ideas, prototyping, user-testing, pilot and pilot monitoring, and rollout recommendation and implementation.
• Together with the team to design effective and commercially viable solutions using human and user-centered design approach to achieve project KPIs.
• Identify (potential) risks and making necessary decisions in ambiguous, fast-paced situations in coordination with the Project Lead and/or team.
• Establish and maintain relationships with the partner (Financial Service Provider) and any relevant stakeholders related to the project.
• Lead/support knowledge management activity related to the project, including documenting detailed project activities and learnings, blogs/article writing, report writing, and internal/external knowledge sharing through different avenues.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to provide critical contribution to other projects/programs beyond the Advisory projects but particularly in Southeast Asia (e.g. research, policy advocacy, training program, etc.), as well as to aligns with overall organization operations/activities to provide excellent service delivery for client-partners.
• Develop a strong understanding of financial inclusion landscape in SEA, particularly Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, specifically for low-income women, to develop ideas/solutions that can increase women's financial inclusion.

Advisory & Market Innovation

• Lead and support multiple advisory initiatives across Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam) that drive innovation and inclusion at the ecosystem level.
• Apply human-centered design, behavioral insights, and data-driven approaches to develop solutions that promote financial resilience and gender-intentional growth.
• Integrate AI-enabled analytics, green and climate-smart finance models, and digital public infrastructure to expand access to responsible financial products.
• Identify policy and regulatory barriers arising from market engagement and channel these insights to WWB's Policy team to inform advocacy and ecosystem strengthening.

Project Management & Delivery

• Manage work plans, budgets, and reporting to ensure timely, high-quality delivery.
• Coordinate across research, design, piloting, and implementation phases in collaboration with partners and internal teams.
• Anticipate and manage risks in complex, multi-stakeholder environments, ensuring that project outcomes contribute to broader systemic goals.

Stakeholder Engagement & Ecosystem Strengthening

• Cultivate relationships with FSPs, fintechs, regulators, and industry associations to co-create scalable, inclusive financial solutions.
• Facilitate dialogue between private and public sector actors to align incentives for inclusion, innovation, and sustainability.
• Contribute to market advocacy efforts that remove barriers for financial institutions and unlock opportunities for underserved customer segments.

Knowledge Management & Learning

• Document and disseminate insights, case studies, and lessons learned to strengthen WWB's position as a thought leader in inclusive finance.
• Contribute to the regional learning and innovation agenda, connecting field implementation with research, data, and policy action.
• Stay ahead of trends in AI for inclusion, digital ecosystems, and climate adaptation to inform future projects and market engagement.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or related fields (MBA or MPP preferred).
• 7–8+ years of experience in financial services (bank or non-bank), fintech, or consulting with exposure to inclusion, innovation, green finance or ecosystem development projects.
• Experience in applied design thinking process, including customer (behavioral) research (qualitative) and analysis, ideation, prototyping, and user testing to develop effective and commercially viable solutions.
• Strong project management skills with minimum 3 years of experience in consulting and/or a project-based role, including ability to deliver multiple projects/tasks at the same time.
• Experience analyzing market and customer data to inform strategic decisions.
• Ability to manage relationships with multiple stakeholders at all levels in an organization.
• Proven communication and stakeholder engagement skills in both English and Bahasa Indonesia.
• Ability to travel across Indonesia and within the region (Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines).

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep interest in financial inclusion, AI for inclusion, and green/climate finance.
• Familiarity with financial services such as credit, savings, insurance, remittances, open banking or payment systems.
• Experience work, in general or to design solution, towards low-income people/women in general, micro and small business owners, migrant workers, unpaid worker.
• Passionate and/or experience working in an NGO or development-related work.
• Demonstrated ability to identify systemic or policy bottlenecks and propose solutions for ecosystem improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to execute and successfully achieve objectives in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with aggressive timelines.
• Intellectual curiosity demonstrated in creative problem solving and solution-seeking.
• Experience leading and coordinating teams of external consultants, ensuring technical excellence and collaborative delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently; as well as to work in a (remote) team.
• Proven success working in multicultural, high-performing, and mission-driven environments.

Measure of Success

Within 75 days

• Fully integrate into both Advisory Services and Southeast Asia team
• Develop a strong understanding of WWB's SEA strategic levers and market advocacy priorities.
• Demonstrate understanding and capability to support/lead SEA Advisory portfolio.
• Embrace and demonstrate Women's World Banking's values – Think Big, Own and Commit to It. Smarter together
• Learn and comprehend Women's World Banking's business model