How can I grow at Dimagi after my two years as a Field Manager?

For those of you who have read or heard about life as a Dimagi Field Manager, you may be wondering what happens after your two years in this exciting role. Great question! After your stint as a Field Manager, there is the opportunity to continue in your role with increased responsibilities or to change to another role within Dimagi, either in a more specialized role in the field or within an office.

Careers at Dimagi can be very individualized, flexible, and shaped by personal interests, which is why no two Field Managers at Dimagi have identical career paths at Dimagi. To give you a better idea of some possibilities, we put together the following four case studies illustrate the career trajectories of four Dimagi employees after their initial jobs as Field Managers. While Dimagi has grown significantly since these four people joined, we’re committed to maintaining the same flexibility they had in defining their own career paths.

Case Study #1: Matt Theis (Joined May 2010)

• Field Manager in Zambia (May 2010 – June 2011):  Matt was the first Dimagi Field Manager! During his first year in Zambia, Matt worked in a technical role on the BHOMA project working with local staff to build capacity, design software and hardware systems, and train users.
• Project Manager in India (November 2011-March 2012): Matt moved to India to manage the new CARE deployment in Bihar. Through this position, he was able to work more closely with the Dimagi technical team regarding complex software needs. He also had the chance to learned how complicated, multi-partner projects are managed and executed.
• Country Director for India (March 2012 – November 2013) Going into his third year with Dimagi, Matt took over as the Country Director of our India office. In this role he oversaw all staff and projects within the country, and continued to manage a few projects himself. He also became responsible for business development, partner relations, team satisfaction, and managing resources.
• VP of Global Services (November 2013 – present): After two years in India, Matt moved back to the US to take on Dimagi’s VP of Global Services. In this role, he is working to improve global coordination between country and satellite offices and improve collaboration and support to the managers of those offices.

Case Study #2: Mohini Bhavsar (Joined May of 2011)

• Field Manager in India (May 2011 – February 2012): Mohini joined Dimagi as the second Field Manager in India. During this time, Mohini devoted 100% of her time towards fieldwork and gained great experience setting up Dimagi’s presence in India.
• Senior Field Manager (February 2012- July 2013): As a Senior Field Manager, Mohini had the opportunity to specialize and have more responsibility on fewer, bigger projects. She spent about 80% of her time driving bigger projects, while also mentoring and managing new Field Managers.
• Manager of Field Operations (July 2013 – July 2014): In her new role, Mohini  began coordinating field support materials, continued to conduct research, and backstopped large projects, all with additional responsibility. She began to play a bigger  role supporting FMs both in India and globally.
• Regional Manager of West Africa (July 2014 – now): Mohini will be transitioning from India to Senegal to head up Dimagi’s Dakar office as our West Africa Regional Manager.

Case Study #3: Jeremy Wacksman (Joined February of 2012)

• Field Manager in India (Feb 2012 – September 2012) Jeremy joined a small but growing field team in India. He spent his first year working on a couple of projects in Mumbai, India, including one of the first projects to ever use the CommCare Android platform at a significant scale.
• Research Coordinator in India (Oct 2012 – February 2013) Thanks to a unique research collaboration with Harvard Business School, University of Washington, Catholic Relief Services, USAID, and Massachusetts General Hospital, Jeremy was able to spend 6 months focused on a CommCare-related research study, looking at CHW worker performance and motivation in rural Northern India.
• Senior Program Analyst (March 2013 – Marcy 2015 ) After his year in India Jeremy transferred to Dimagi’s US office and started managing several US-based projects, including SMS and complex clinical programs. In additional he started to work on developing the CommCare Certification program and helping with CommCare’s Support Team.
• Program Manager (March 2015 – Present) Entering is fourth year Jeremy started working more on Dimagi’s data team, helping to coordinating analyses with external research partners and develop useful outputs for the global field team. He continued to develop the Certification program, leading a team which stood up an online learning platform and started to certify people as part of Dimagi’s global services.