Executive Director - Indonesia

About Yayasan Bakti Pendidikan Unggul
YBPU is a not-for-profit organisation under the Bakti Barito Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the Barito Pacific Group. YBPU works with missions to accelerate the equality in education and to support achieving the golden generations in Indonesia especially around the business units and affiliates of Barito Pacific Group.
In January 2022, YBPU established a partnership with STIR Education to strengthen its programmes and to accelerate its missions. The partnership has the purpose of supporting the education system to reignite sustainable intrinsic motivation and a love of lifelong learning across stakeholders at all levels of the education systems, including; children, teachers and school leaders, supervisors, and coordinator supervisors and to build capacity across all levels.
About Stir Education
STIR Education is an international NGO that supports education systems to reignite intrinsic motivation so that every child, teacher and official is motivated to learn and improve. At a practical level, that means we support governments to reignite intrinsic motivation in teachers and local officials, through teacher networks. Our vision is a world where teachers love teaching and children love learning. Since 2012 we have reached 200,000 teachers and 6 million children across 70 districts in India and Uganda and have recently launched our programme in two districts in East Java, Indonesia.
OUR MODEL
We achieve this through a five-year learning partnership with an education system, where we align all levels of the education system (officials, teachers and children) around the goal of increasing intrinsic motivation.
Practically, this means that teachers undergo monthly network meetings with about 20 to 30 local peers. Through these meetings they’re supported to develop their practice in areas ranging from effective questioning to creating warm but orderly classroom routines – all designed to create a more effective relationship between the teacher and child. In doing so they develop a sense of autonomy (the sense they can change things), mastery (sense of getting better as a professionals) and purpose (reconnecting emotionally with their peers and students) – the key drivers of intrinsic motivation.
District officials undergo a training and coaching programme that motivates and supports them to prioritise, run and monitor the teacher networks and a close partnership with the state or national government enables the government to align this intrinsic motivation approach within their priorities, structures and systems.
The approach is run by the government from day one and after about five years of partnering with an education system we hope to have embedded a culture of improvement at all levels for the system to continue to strengthen itself. We typically allocate one member of our own staff per district to train, energise and coach the district officials running the approach, and a small team at the national or state level.
OUR VALUES
How we approach our work is as important as what we do and our core values guide the way:
Humility – We don’t have all the answers upfront.
Ownership – We empower each other with high expectations & support.
Openness – We will listen, learn and improve, and lead through obstacles.
Purpose – We’re united by a shared vision we’ll build & achieve together.
OUR TEAM AND PARTNERS
STiR has deliberately built a cross-cultural team with backgrounds in the private, public and social sectors. We’re a lean and nimble organisation with around 60 professionals working across seven offices in London, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kampala, Jakarta and Addis Ababa. And our Board members include Jo Owen (co-founder of Teach First and leadership writer), John Knight (former Finance Director of Pearson’s International Business), David Rothschild (a senior leader at several leading US foundations, including the Skoll Foundation) and Louise Henbest (Global HR Director, Unilever).
Our donors have included the MasterCard Foundation, the Maitri Trust, UBS Optimus, Vitol Foundation and the Ikea Foundation, in addition to leading family foundations such as the Sainsbury, Peery and Segal Foundations, and Indian corporates such as IDFC Asset Management.
We bring a mix of skills to our partner governments, including design, learning, M&E, quality assurance and implementation support. Our team works with senior officials around planning, influencing, facilitating, coaching and leveraging data.
We’re aiming to remain lean and agile even as we scale significantly. It’s important that we continue to embrace change and take risks – but build in rapid feedback loops to ensure that we stay on the right track. At the end of 2025, we launched an ambitious 2025 strategy.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The Executive Director role presents a unique opportunity for an exceptional candidate to shape and build the YBPU- STIR programme in Indonesia. Our goals are ambitious, with the aim to ensure our programmes have an impact on over 7 million children across the country by 2030. As the Executive Director you will be responsible for driving our work towards this goal, through overseeing the delivery and quality, scaling and sustainability of our programme and approach and leading on government relations.
Reporting, Roles And Responsibilities
The post holder will report to the Senior Director for Programme Delivery with a strong relationship with the Head of Foundation of YBPU. The post holder will initially line manage one Senior Programme Manager and will grow the team as the programme in Indonesia expands. The role is based in Jakarta with frequent travel within Indonesia and occasional international travel. It is a member of STIR’s Senior Leadership Team. The post holder shall abide all rules and regulations in Indonesia, following the international conventions and the code of conduct of the Barito Pacific group.
Drive the vision and quality of implementation of STiR’s work in Indonesia

• Develop and lead the delivery of a YBPU-STIR Strategy for Indonesia, aligned with STIR’s 2025 strategy.
• Internally/externally communicate and enact a plan to achieve the vision over five years , beginning with East Java and East Nusa Tenggara of STiR's Programme with energy and rigour
• Establish a clear purpose and sense of momentum toward the vision of reigniting intrinsic motivation for all in the Indonesian education system
• Ensure the vision is shared by a ‘guiding coalition’ of senior government and political leaders at both national and provincial level
• Conduct regular field visits to our districts to monitor programme delivery, quality and vitality of the STiR values

Inspire national and provincial governments to embrace, embed and sustain a system-wide culture of intrinsic motivation and behaviour change

• Ensure STiR’s role in helping governments achieve their own priorities is clearly understood and valued by all senior stakeholders
• Work closely with senior staff at the Ministry of Education and Culture in Jakarta to devise a long-term strategy to ensure that programme expansion is government-driven and a key national priority aligned with government strategies and priorities
• Role model the importance of intrinsic motivation to government officials to lay the foundations for national culture shifts
• Work with national ministry officials along with provincial and district officials to develop and execute a sustainability strategy for our work in Indonesia.

Lead on stakeholder and partner relations, advocating for our approach to the wider education space in Indonesia and ensuring we have strong partnerships, especially that the YBPU-STIR partnership is successful

• Ensure the delivery of an advocacy and communications strategy and plan for our work in Indonesia, which builds the case for our work and shares success and learning to a range of relevant audiences.
• Lead on stakeholder relations with likeminded organisations, other NGOs and bodies such as FCDO and the World Bank.
• Establish, energise and participate in a national advisory group to advise on programme quality and implementation
• Take a lead role in the YBPU-STIR partnership, ensuring our MOU is executed well, and a strong learning partnership is developed.
• Plan and execute STIR’s future operations in Indonesia, which could involve setting up as our own entity/ foundation in the medium term.

Nurture a team and partnership culture that’s grounded in our values

• Manage and use budget and resources effectively, efficiently and responsibly
• Model professionalism, ownership and a growth mindset at all times
• Oversee a people and culture plan as the team grows, ensuring team members are given opportunities to build intrinsic motivation at work (autonomy, mastery and purpose) and that a values aligned culture is built.

Provide exemplary leadership & development support to the team & leaders

• Exhibit quality line management that fosters peak performance & personal growth
• Lead and build a team in Indonesia which is aligned to STIR’s values and where every team member has the opportunity to grow autonomy, mastery and purpose.
• Support functional team leads to take ownership of programme delivery & results
• Clearly articulate expectations & provide operational structures for the team
• Set a planning process & high expectations – making sure each team member sees how their role fits into the wider organizational & Indonesia-specific goals

Act as the STiR ambassador in Indonesia and contribute to our global goals, strategy and fundraising

• Share STiR’s learnings and core messages with funders and strategic partners to establish trust and build confidence in our continual forward progress
• Work closely with our Donor Partnerships team to support engagement with our donors, and spearhead local fundraising efforts with government
• Form mutually beneficial relationships with counterparts in other countries/states to support each other and share findings
• Contribute to sector-wide learning and position STiR to stay current with policy changes and emerging trends in Indonesian education
• Work closely with the financial and admin team on finance, legal and compliance matters.

Required Skills And Experience

• Proven experience in setting strategic direction and leading others to deliver with excitement and self-drive
• Evidence-based decision making and data-driven alignment practices
• Strong implementation focus, ‘can-do’ attitude and ability to rapidly adapt
• Humility, no ego and open to feedback
• Strong alignment with STIR’s values of humility, openness, ownership and purpose and a commitment and ability to leading in a way which demonstrates and role models values aligned behaviours.
• A commitment and ability to develope people into leaders
• Proficiency in written and spoken English and Bahasa
• Ability to be highly entrepreneurial and drive a ‘start up’ to sustained success
• Ability to proactively build and maintain a dynamic culture of high expectations and learning
• Excellent influencing and written/verbal communication skills
• Comfortable and happy to work in a culture in which team members are given high levels of ownership in their work and where the role of leaders is primarily to coach, inspire and guide, rather than be directive (ideally the post holder will have experience of working in such a culture).
• Proven experience in forming collaborative relationships with governments and diverse stakeholders at all levels of seniority, and the ability to inspire a sense of possibility within these groups
• Extensive knowledge and experience (at least 5 years) in delivering complex programmes within a government context in Indonesia
• Creative and critical thinking – from adaptive design to problem-solving
• Ability to manage change and support teams to deal with ambiguity
• Strong planning, budgeting & financial and project management skills

Remuneration And Benefits
The successful candidate will earn a gross salary of 59,899,800/- IDR monthly, along with
reimbursement for medical insurance (subject to relevant taxes).