Project & Operations Analyst

PROJECT & OPERATIONS ANALYST INTERN

ABOUT MORSBY, GORMAN, MCCARTHY LLC

Morsby, Gorman, McCarthy LLC is developing Project Guardian as a multidisciplinary, project-based initiative focused on infrastructure planning, implementation readiness, policy research, partnership development, evidence management, risk analysis, communications, and program coordination.

Project Guardian’s initial work centers on a proposed Kenya-focused infrastructure pilot. Participants will contribute to research, planning, analysis, documentation, and professional-quality project materials intended to help clarify the pilot’s feasibility, evidentiary foundation, funding requirements, implementation conditions, and potential pathways toward responsible replication or expansion.

Participation does not represent employment by, appointment to, or endorsement from any government, university, funder, development institution, community, or prospective partner. Project Guardian is an independent initiative of Morsby, Gorman, McCarthy LLC unless a separate written agreement states otherwise.

PROGRAM TERMS

• Program dates: October 19, 2026–January 29, 2027
• Holiday pause: December 19, 2026–January 3, 2027, during which no routine work is expected
• Fully remote and asynchronous-first
• Normally 5–10 hours per week
• Work exceeding 10 hours in a week requires advance written approval
• Participants should not ordinarily exceed approximately 15 hours in any week
• Unpaid educational internship
• Academic credit may be available only when approved by the participant’s institution
• No promise or expectation of future employment
• Reasonable academic and accessibility accommodations will be considered
• Participation is subject to applicable confidentiality, data-handling, authorship, attribution, acceptable-use, and release requirements

EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE

This is a structured, project-based learning experience. Participants receive defined learning objectives, supervised assignments, written or documented feedback, revision opportunities, and exposure to multidisciplinary infrastructure, public policy, research, implementation planning, risk management, and program-operations work.

Assignments are designed to develop transferable professional competencies through applied work of educational value. Participants may produce portfolio-appropriate materials, excerpts, or descriptions subject to confidentiality, intellectual-property, attribution, data-protection, and release requirements. Inclusion of any project material, tracker, process map, operational document, screenshot, or deliverable in a portfolio requires prior written authorization.

Academic credit may be available only when approved by the participant’s institution. Participants are responsible for initiating and satisfying their institution’s credit-approval process. Morsby, Gorman, McCarthy LLC will reasonably cooperate with legitimate institutional documentation, learning-agreement, supervision, evaluation, and verification requirements when provided with sufficient notice.

Academic credit is not guaranteed and is not required for participation. The availability, amount, classification, and conditions of credit are determined solely by the participant’s institution.

The internship is intended to complement academic study and professional development. Participants will not displace regular employees or independently perform functions requiring licensed legal, engineering, accounting, financial, procurement, regulatory, safety, or other specialized professional judgment.

ROLE PURPOSE

The Project & Operations Analyst helps convert Project Guardian’s approved objectives into organized, practical, and traceable work plans.

The analyst will support project planning, implementation sequencing, milestone development, dependency tracking, decision documentation, coordination, continuity, and operating-process improvement. The role is designed for participants who want applied experience transforming broad or ambiguous objectives into manageable assignments and clearly documented next steps.

This is a hands-on contributor internship, not a senior management or independent decision-making position. Formal supervisory experience is not required.

Analysts will receive defined assignments, access to appropriate project context, documented feedback, revision opportunities, and the opportunity to undertake progressively more complex work based on demonstrated readiness, reliability, learning objectives, interests, and program needs.

The analyst may support one or more Project Guardian workstreams. Assignments will be scoped according to participant readiness, educational value, available supervision, project priorities, confidentiality, and the time commitments stated above.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the conclusion of the internship, the participant should be able to:

• Translate an approved project objective into clearly defined tasks, milestones, owners, deadlines, dependencies, and acceptance criteria
• Distinguish objectives, activities, outputs, outcomes, assumptions, risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, and actions
• Develop and maintain practical project plans and operational trackers
• Identify unclear ownership, missing information, scheduling conflicts, bottlenecks, and single points of failure
• Prepare concise and decision-useful project-status communications
• Document meetings, decisions, assignments, changes, and handoffs accurately
• Develop basic process maps, checklists, standard operating procedures, and workflow guidance
• Assess whether an assignment is appropriately scoped for the available time, capacity, evidence, and authority
• Recognize when a delayed or blocked task requires clarification, reprioritization, escalation, or recovery planning
• Coordinate effectively across research, technical, policy, funding, data, evidence, risk, and communications functions
• Apply appropriate confidentiality, version-control, sourcing, attribution, and responsible-tool practices
• Incorporate feedback into revised work products
• Recognize questions requiring leadership or qualified professional review
• Reflect on the relationship among project planning, local context, stakeholder authority, evidence, implementation feasibility, and ethical decision-making

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

Work Planning and Task Development

• Convert approved objectives into manageable tasks, milestones, deadlines, deliverables, acceptance criteria, and ownership assignments
• Clarify the purpose, intended user, expected output, source requirements, dependencies, and approval path for assigned work
• Break complex assignments into logical stages that can be completed and reviewed within available time
• Identify assumptions or missing information that could affect the proposed plan
• Distinguish required work from optional enhancements or longer-term possibilities
• Recommend practical sequencing based on dependencies, urgency, available capacity, and review requirements
• Avoid presenting a preliminary work plan as authorization to begin external activity or make commitments
• Update plans when priorities, evidence, capacity, or dependencies change
• Preserve a record of material revisions and the reasons for them

Milestone and Deliverable Tracking

• Help maintain project plans, milestone trackers, deliverable registers, and action records
• Track due dates, ownership, dependencies, review status, blockers, and completion evidence
• Distinguish work that is started, in progress, awaiting information, under review, approved, deferred, superseded, or completed
• Identify delayed, blocked, unclear, vulnerable, or unassigned tasks
• Flag milestones dependent on unavailable evidence, unresolved decisions, external approvals, or overloaded contributors
• Support development of realistic recovery actions when work falls behind
• Verify completion against defined acceptance criteria rather than relying solely on informal status reports
• Avoid altering deadlines, ownership, scope, or completion status without appropriate confirmation
• Communicate material changes and risks promptly through designated channels

Dependency, Assumption, Decision, and Action Records

• Help maintain dependency, assumption, decision, question, and action logs
• Record what is known, what remains uncertain, who owns the next step, and when review is expected
• Link material decisions to their supporting context and affected deliverables
• Identify decisions that have been discussed but not formally resolved
• Distinguish an approved decision from a recommendation, preference, proposal, or working assumption
• Identify conflicting decisions, unresolved dependencies, and assumptions that require validation
• Maintain sufficient context so another authorized participant can understand and continue the work
• Escalate decisions that exceed the analyst’s assignment or authority

Status Reporting and Operational Briefing

• Prepare concise status summaries, operational briefs, exception reports, and decision-support notes
• Describe completed work, current priorities, upcoming milestones, blockers, risks, decisions required, and next actions
• Distinguish verified status from estimates, assumptions, or incomplete reporting
• Tailor the level of detail to the intended internal audience
• Avoid overstating progress, certainty, readiness, or completion
• Identify matters requiring immediate attention without labeling routine delays as emergencies
• Preserve material qualifications, dependencies, and data limitations
• Maintain source or record references for significant factual claims
• Support leadership review with clear, organized, and actionable information

Meeting and Coordination Support

• Prepare agendas, background materials, decision questions, and action lists for approved internal meetings or asynchronous reviews
• Record material decisions, assignments, deadlines, unresolved questions, and follow-up actions
• Circulate or file records through approved internal processes
• Distinguish formal decisions from informal discussion or brainstorming
• Confirm unclear ownership or deadlines with the appropriate supervisor
• Track assigned follow-up actions and identify overdue or blocked items
• Help reduce unnecessary meetings by supporting clear asynchronous documentation
• Avoid recording or distributing sensitive discussions beyond authorized purposes and audiences

Process Mapping and Operational Documentation

• Develop supervised process maps, checklists, workflow descriptions, standard operating procedures, onboarding materials, and handoff documents
• Identify where a process begins and ends, who is involved, what information is required, and what approvals apply
• Distinguish current practice from proposed improvements
• Identify unnecessary duplication, unclear responsibility, avoidable delay, missing controls, and undocumented dependencies
• Test whether authorized users can understand and follow the documented process
• Incorporate feedback from the people responsible for or affected by the process
• Maintain version, ownership, review, and approval information
• Avoid presenting an unapproved draft process as mandatory policy

Capacity and Continuity Support

• Help identify workload concentration, coverage gaps, incomplete handoffs, unavailable ownership, and single points of failure
• Support basic cross-coverage, succession, transition, and continuity planning
• Help determine the minimum information another authorized participant would need to continue an assignment
• Coordinate with the Monitoring, Risk and Continuity Lead on relevant risks and contingency actions
• Coordinate with the Knowledge and Data-Room Manager on records, access, ownership transfer, and handoff requirements
• Avoid collecting unnecessary personal, medical, academic, family, immigration, or other sensitive information when assessing capacity
• Focus capacity records on authorized project availability, assignments, dependencies, and operational requirements
• Escalate accommodation, performance, conduct, or welfare concerns through designated supervisory channels

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Support coordination among research, technical, policy, funding, evidence, risk, data, design, and communications teams
• Identify cross-workstream dependencies and sequencing requirements
• Help ensure that teams are working from the appropriate current assumptions, decisions, and approved materials
• Document questions that require input from another workstream
• Track whether requested information or review has been provided
• Help reconcile conflicting timelines, terminology, or task expectations
• Refer unresolved substantive disagreements to appropriate leadership
• Avoid independently deciding technical, legal, financial, policy, or stakeholder matters outside the analyst’s assigned scope

Bounded Research and Implementation-Planning Support

• Conduct clearly scoped research supporting approved project-planning and implementation assignments
• Use credible sources and preserve citation, access-date, and retrieval information
• Summarize findings accurately and distinguish evidence from inference or recommendation
• Identify material information gaps, conflicting sources, outdated material, and questions requiring local or specialist validation
• Support preliminary implementation sequencing, responsibility mapping, readiness analysis, and dependency assessment
• Avoid representing desk research as field verification, community consultation, engineering analysis, legal review, or implementation approval
• Treat Kenya-specific institutions, communities, stakeholders, geography, and decision-making authority accurately and respectfully
• Avoid implying local endorsement, consent, participation, or commitment that has not been confirmed

Workflow and Process Improvement

• Identify practical opportunities to improve clarity, coordination, documentation, consistency, and handoff quality
• Define the problem being addressed before recommending a new process or tool
• Consider educational value, user needs, adoption burden, confidentiality, accessibility, and maintenance requirements
• Propose proportionate improvements rather than unnecessary process complexity
• Distinguish immediate corrective actions from longer-term enhancements
• Document the expected benefit, tradeoffs, dependencies, and implementation requirements
• Test or review proposed improvements under supervision when appropriate
• Avoid introducing new software, accounts, automations, or external services without authorization

SUPERVISION, FEEDBACK, AND REVISION

The Project & Operations Analyst will receive assignments, guidance, and feedback from designated project or workstream leadership.

The Deputy Program and Operations Manager maintains overall operational coordination. Depending on placement, the analyst may also receive substantive direction from another designated workstream lead.

The educational workflow is expected to include:

• Initial orientation to Project Guardian’s scope, objectives, structure, standards, and limitations
• Defined assignments connected to the role’s learning objectives
• Access to appropriate templates, examples, source requirements, and project context
• Scheduled or milestone-based supervisory review
• Written, annotated, or otherwise documented feedback
• Opportunities to ask questions and clarify expectations
• Reasonable opportunities to revise substantive work
• Increasing complexity where supported by performance and educational value
• Periodic reflection on professional development and learning progress
• A final review or evaluation where appropriate

Feedback may address planning logic, organization, accuracy, completeness, prioritization, documentation, source use, status reporting, professional communication, collaboration, judgment, reliability, and the participant’s ability to incorporate revisions.

EXPECTED EDUCATIONAL OUTPUTS

Depending on project needs, participant readiness, workstream placement, source availability, and supervisory direction, outputs may include:

• Structured work plans
• Task and milestone trackers
• Deliverable and review-status registers
• Dependency, assumption, decision, question, and action records
• Status summaries and operational briefs
• Meeting agendas, notes, decision records, and follow-up lists
• Process maps and workflow descriptions
• Checklists and procedural guidance
• Onboarding and handoff documentation
• Capacity and cross-coverage assessments
• Continuity and workflow-improvement recommendations
• Preliminary implementation-sequencing materials
• Responsibility and dependency maps
• Bounded research memoranda
• Source-supported contributions to pilot-planning materials
• End-of-assignment summaries and unresolved-matters records
• Substantive original operational, analytical, and written work

Outputs are educational and developmental materials. Their production does not guarantee that they will be adopted, externally distributed, published, implemented, or used to make final project decisions.

PERFORMANCE AND LEARNING ASSESSMENT

Progress may be assessed according to:

• Organization, reliability, and attention to detail
• Quality and practicality of project plans
• Ability to define tasks, milestones, dependencies, ownership, and acceptance criteria
• Accuracy and usability of trackers, logs, briefs, and operational records
• Ability to distinguish objectives, activities, outputs, outcomes, assumptions, risks, issues, decisions, and actions
• Quality and reliability of sources
• Transparency concerning uncertainty, limitations, and information gaps
• Ability to identify blocked, delayed, vulnerable, or unclear work
• Clarity and professionalism of written communication
• Appropriate escalation of material questions and risks
• Respect for confidentiality, local context, stakeholder authority, and disciplinary boundaries
• Ability to receive, evaluate, and incorporate feedback
• Reliability in meeting agreed milestones or communicating constraints early
• Effectiveness in multidisciplinary collaboration
• Growth against the stated learning objectives

Assessment is intended to support learning and program administration. It is not a licensed professional examination or certification in project management, operations management, engineering, risk management, or any other professional field.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Candidates may be undergraduate or graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, recent graduates, alumni, or early-career professionals. Relevant classroom, volunteer, internship, military, community, entrepreneurial, or professional experience may be considered. No single academic major is required.

Relevant academic areas may include project management, operations management, business administration, public administration, public policy, nonprofit management, engineering management, industrial engineering, international development, information systems, economics, political science, or related interdisciplinary fields.

Strong candidates will demonstrate:

• Organization, reliability, initiative, and clear written communication
• Interest or experience in project planning, operations, implementation, public administration, business, engineering management, or related work
• Ability to turn ambiguous objectives into structured tasks and practical next steps
• Ability to distinguish confirmed requirements from assumptions and unresolved questions
• Comfort working independently on defined assignments while communicating when guidance is needed
• Familiarity with documents, spreadsheets, trackers, process maps, or remote collaboration tools
• Ability to manage deadlines, accept feedback, document work, and ask timely questions
• Respect for different disciplines, institutions, cultures, and time zones
• Willingness to work carefully with incomplete information without inventing certainty
• Interest in multidisciplinary infrastructure and implementation challenges

Prior experience relating to Kenya, Africa, international development, or infrastructure may be helpful but is not required. Applicants should be willing to learn the relevant context and work carefully with credible local, regional, and international sources.

Formal supervisory experience and professional project-management certification are not required.

APPLICATION MATERIALS

Applicants should submit through Handshake:

• A current résumé
• A cover letter explaining their interest in Project Guardian and describing relevant project, operations, planning, implementation, organizational, or transferable experience
• One relevant work sample, such as a project plan, process map, operational brief, implementation plan, research paper, workflow analysis, meeting-to-action summary, tracker, presentation, or comparable academic, professional, volunteer, military, community, entrepreneurial, or independent work

Applicants should remove or redact confidential, proprietary, personally identifiable, restricted, privileged, or third-party information from submitted samples.

If the applicant’s strongest work was completed collaboratively, the applicant should briefly identify their individual contribution.

A prior professional work sample is not required. Academic, volunteer, independent, simulated, or appropriately redacted work is acceptable.

SELECTION PROCESS

Initial screening will be asynchronous. Applications will be assessed based on demonstrated alignment, planning ability, organization, communication quality, judgment, transferable skills, learning potential, and the relevance of submitted materials.

Finalists may be invited to complete a brief, time-limited educational evaluation exercise using hypothetical or publicly available information. The exercise may ask the applicant to convert an ambiguous pilot brief into a short work plan, identify important dependencies and risks, propose milestones, or prepare a concise status summary.

Any selection exercise will be designed solely to evaluate the applicant’s reasoning and communication. It will not involve actual confidential project information, be used as uncompensated production work, or be incorporated into Project Guardian deliverables without separate written permission and appropriate arrangements.

Live conversations will be limited to finalists or circumstances requiring clarification. References may be requested selectively. Reasonable accommodations are available during the selection process.

Priority application deadline: October 2, 2026. The posting may close earlier or later based on application volume, institutional review timing, or program needs.

ELIGIBILITY AND INSTITUTIONAL CONDITIONS

Applicants must be able to participate remotely during the stated program period and communicate reliably in an asynchronous-first environment.

Students seeking academic credit must contact their institution and initiate any required approval, registration, learning-agreement, or internship-verification process. Institutional approval and academic credit are not guaranteed.

Where required, participation may be conditioned on completion of appropriate institutional documentation, confidentiality agreements, information-handling acknowledgments, intellectual-property terms, conflict disclosures, acceptable-use requirements, or other reasonable program documentation.

International students and other applicants are responsible for confirming with their institution or qualified adviser whether participation is consistent with applicable academic, immigration, authorization, funding, or institutional requirements. Morsby, Gorman, McCarthy LLC does not provide immigration, visa, tax, legal, or employment-authorization advice.

CONFIDENTIALITY, ATTRIBUTION, AND RESPONSIBLE TOOL USE

Participants may encounter confidential, preliminary, proprietary, sensitive, or access-controlled information. Such information may be used only for authorized program purposes and handled according to applicable instructions.

Participants must:

• Protect confidential, personal, proprietary, and restricted information
• Use only authorized systems, accounts, storage locations, and transfer methods
• Access only materials reasonably necessary for assigned work
• Avoid uploading confidential, personal, proprietary, or restricted materials to unapproved third-party platforms
• Preserve citations, source records, calculation notes, review history, and version information
• Distinguish original work from quoted, adapted, collaborative, template-based, or tool-assisted material
• Disclose material use of generative artificial intelligence or other automated tools when requested
• Independently verify factual claims, quotations, calculations, classifications, and source interpretations
• Avoid fabricating sources, status reports, decisions, approvals, stakeholder views, data, progress, or findings
• Obtain approval before externally sharing project materials or including them in a portfolio
• Report suspected confidentiality, access, integrity, or information-handling problems promptly

Automated tools may support learning, brainstorming, organization, analysis, or drafting only when permitted. They may not replace the participant’s judgment, source verification, confidentiality obligations, or responsibility for submitted work.

Restricted information may not be entered into public or unauthorized artificial-intelligence systems. Automatically generated plans, summaries, meeting notes, schedules, classifications, or recommendations must receive appropriate human review.

PROFESSIONAL AND REGULATORY LIMITATIONS

This internship does not authorize the participant to provide or represent that they are providing legal, engineering, accounting, financial, procurement, regulatory, safety, cybersecurity, or other licensed professional advice or certification.

Project plans, process maps, implementation sequences, trackers, capacity analyses, and operating recommendations are educational planning and decision-support materials. They are not construction plans, engineering determinations, legal opinions, audited records, procurement authorizations, safety certifications, or guarantees of feasibility, funding, compliance, implementation, or performance.

Questions requiring specialized professional judgment must be identified and routed for qualified review.

REPORTING AND AUTHORITY

The analyst will receive assignments and feedback from designated project or workstream leadership. The Deputy Program and Operations Manager maintains overall operational coordination.

The analyst may:

• Complete approved internal research, planning, analysis, and documentation assignments
• Maintain assigned trackers, logs, plans, and process records
• Request clarification and authorized project-status information
• Recommend task structures, sequencing, workflow improvements, and next steps
• Identify and escalate blockers, dependencies, risks, and unresolved questions
• Collaborate with assigned internal participants
• Revise work in response to documented feedback

The analyst may not independently:

• Supervise, hire, remove, discipline, or evaluate other participants
• Change approved project scope, priorities, deadlines, ownership, or policies
• Authorize or conduct external outreach
• Contact government officials, communities, institutions, funders, partners, vendors, or other external stakeholders without approval
• Publish, distribute, or release project materials
• Issue public statements
• Make financial, legal, employment, procurement, partnership, technical, or contractual commitments
• Represent the company, project, or any institution externally
• Approve substantive technical, financial, legal, policy, or stakeholder conclusions
• Access information beyond what is authorized for assigned work
• Promise funding, partnership, implementation, academic credit, employment, publication, or any project outcome
• Authorize another participant to exercise any of these powers

Final decisions concerning project scope, external communication, resource commitments, publication, implementation, personnel, risk acceptance, and institutional representation remain with authorized program leadership and, where necessary, qualified professionals.

All external outreach, submissions, representations, commitments, and releases require prior authorization.

EQUAL CONSIDERATION AND ACCOMMODATIONS

Morsby, Gorman, McCarthy LLC intends to consider applicants based on role-related qualifications, demonstrated readiness, learning potential, and program needs. Reasonable accommodations may be requested for the application process or internship experience.

Applicants are encouraged to describe relevant academic, professional, volunteer, military, community, entrepreneurial, caregiving, independent, or lived experience when it demonstrates transferable skills applicable to the role.