People Operations Lead, AI Access Initiative

Job Description

About The AI Access Initiative

We’re at an inflection point in artificial intelligence — presenting both tremendous potential opportunity and risk for people in developing countries: rather than allowing the poverty gap to expand, low-income countries have an opportunity to leapfrog development milestones with AI-powered innovations. Incubated at Evidence Action, we’re launching The AI Access Initiative, an organization focused on scaling AI-enabled ‘big bets’ to benefit tens or hundreds of millions of people in poverty in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

We will operate at the intersection of global development actors, top AI labs, and leading researchers to drive meaningful access to the benefits of AI for the 3.5 billion people living in poverty globally. We will create “public good,” open-sourced playbooks, toolkits, and insights that define how to design and launch tractable and impactful AI-enabled programs. Given the scale of opportunity, we expect our portfolio to expand substantially, but to start, we’re scaling two programs focused on AI in Agriculture and AI in Health.

We are led by CEO Kanika Bahl, a founding member of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, and advised by Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer; Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic; and Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs for Alphabet and Google. This work builds on Evidence Action’s track record reaching 530M+ people with cost-effective, evidence-based programs across 9 countries in Africa and Asia, with a focus on last-mile delivery.

Our Approach

We’re building an AI-native organization focused on designing solutions to reach tens or hundreds of millions of individuals living in poverty. We will focus both on delivering near-term, tractable direct impact as well as assisting governments to grow capacity and build enabling environments for the AI for Good ecosystem, including: 

• Scaling “big bet” AI interventions to impact tens or hundreds of millions, such as delivering AI-enabled forecasts to smallholder farmers to improve yields and earnings, leveraging AI to dramatically improve medical diagnosis and treatment, implementing frontier systems to identify and mitigate disease outbreaks, or putting personalized AI tutors into the hands of students to drive reductions to system-level educational attainment gaps. When relevant, we will partner with leading AI labs to shape technical offerings, including adapting for underrepresented languages, bandwidth constraints, etc.
• Partnering with governments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to drive regulatory changes, policy, and investments necessary to unlock beneficial use cases at national scale, while proactively mitigating the downside risks of AI.

Building on our recent Cross-Sector Analysis of near and medium-term AI opportunities in LMICs, we are advancing the highest-scoring interventions through a rigorous vetting process, including evidence reviews, cost-effectiveness analyses, risk assessments, and early operational/technical scoping. We are excited about the opportunity to deliver AI-enabled weather forecasting for smallholder farmers, and are now running deeper analysis on opportunities in global health.

The Role

The AI Access Initiative is at an early and critical juncture. We’re building a high-performing, globally distributed team from the ground up. We are hiring a People Operations Leader who can make this possible. In this role, you will have the opportunity to define and scale people operations for our team. This includes building lean systems to hire, onboard, and retain top talent to unlock meaningful upside for people in poverty globally.

This role sits at the intersection of talent, performance, and organizational design. You will partner closely with the leadership team, act as a strategic thought partner and tactical operator on people decisions, and proactively look around corners on talent risk. You care deeply about the mission. You want to support the humans on this team including their growth, wellbeing, and ability to focus on work that matters, while building the systems and culture that make achieving our ambitious mission possible. You are excited to drive the engine behind the growth of a fast-scaling organization - growing by 20+ people in the coming year, and scaling meaningfully from there.

Level: We are open to considering exceptional candidates at the Senior Manager, Associate Director, and Director levels, depending on experience and fit. We will adjust the scope of the role based on the job level. 

Responsibilities 

Recruitment 

• Own high-quality recruiting end-to-end, not coordinate it. Run every stage of the hiring process, in partnership with program teams: sourcing, pipeline development, structured assessment design, offer construction, and close. 
• Build pipelines before you need them. For senior and specialist roles, the best candidates aren’t applying, they’re being found. Develop sourcing strategies, maintain warm networks, and create visibility in markets where top talent is scarce.
• Design structured hiring processes with rigorous assessments. Ensure every role has identified key criteria,  consistent evaluation criteria, and interview panels that are systematically testing for core criteria and cultural fit. 
• Design creative processes to assess AI engagement in candidates, and maintain a picture of cutting edge fluency in tools and capabilities.
• Build hiring capacity in the organization. Coach hiring managers to be exceptional interviewers, give calibrated feedback, and make decisions efficiently. The quality of our hires is one of the most important drivers of organizational success , and you consistently raise the floor.

Talent Density 

• Build and maintain high talent density:  Help create a culture where excellence is recognized, and areas of growth are rapidly addressed. . Know who is performing at or above role expectations, who is developing, and who is at risk across the full team- and help managers move them up the performance ladder where needed.
• Train managers to have the conversations that matter. A performance system is only as good as the managers who use it. Build capability so that feedback is specific, timely, and useful.
• Navigate performance issues with good judgment. Coach leaders to navigate underperformance in a thoughtful and timely way, moving quickly from diagnosis to clear feedback to decisive action.   Manage underperformance situations with accountability to the mission and team and care for the individual. .
• Connect talent insights to organizational planning. Succession and talent density work should inform headcount planning, L&D investment, and how we structure roles. Translate the talent picture into concrete decisions.

People Operations Infrastructure 

• Own the cultural formation arc across the organization. From designing recruitment processes that select for values alignment, to shaping the formative first 90 days with deliberate cultural onboarding, to finding the recurring moments throughout an employee's tenure to reinforce our values. 
• Source and manage a PEO or EOR to handle employment contracts, salary administration, and benefits across multiple jurisdictions.
• Design a performance system that drives growth and accountability, not one that checks a compliance box. Our performance approach should be something people find genuinely useful including a tool for honest conversations, meaningful development, and clear expectations.
• Design onboarding that actually sets people up for success. The first 60–90 days in a role are critical. Build a structured onboarding experience that orientates new hires to the mission, their role,  our values, the team, and what great performance looks like.
• Build compensation frameworks that are equitable and defensible across geographies. We operate across LMICs and high-income country contexts. Develop a compensation philosophy and structure that is fair, transparent, and grounded in data and that we can explain to staff.
• Use data to drive people decisions. Build and maintain the tools and dashboards that give you and leadership a clear picture of headcount, attrition, hiring velocity, compensation equity, and team health. 
• Ensure compliance across operating jurisdictions. Understand the labor law landscape across our operating countries well enough to keep us compliant, or know exactly who to call when you need expert input. Employment risk is organizational risk.
• Champion the strategic use of data, technology, and AI to strengthen people processes and outcomes. 

Strategic Thought Partnership 

• Be brought in early on people decisions. Build credibility with leaders so that they consult you when they’re thinking through a hire, a team structure, or a difficult personnel situation, not once they’ve already decided.
• Push back when something doesn’t feel right. If a hire doesn’t align with what the structured process is telling us, say so. If a promotion decision is premature or a team restructure creates risks that haven’t been surfaced, name them. Delivering uncomfortable input is part of the job
• Handle sensitive employee situations with discretion and judgment. Know when to escalate, when to resolve directly, and when to bring in external expertise. Protect the individual and the organization simultaneously, and never let a situation fester because it’s uncomfortable.

Currently at The AI Access Initiative, no two days are the same. On a typical day, you might create a structured hiring process for a country director role, present a salary benchmarking analysis to the COO, and coach a finalist candidate in Nairobi through their final offer decision. You'll also catch a gap in a new hire's onboarding plan before it becomes a retention issue, and help an employee with an insurance question by the end of day.

Requirements

• 5+ years in HR, people operations, or talent roles, with meaningful time spent in organizations that required you to build rather than inherit.
• Demonstrated experience in full-cycle recruiting, including sourcing and closing senior hires in competitive or thin-talent markets.
• Strong analytical instincts; you build tools and analyze data yourself rather than waiting for a dedicated analyst.
• Experience working in or across low- and middle-income country contexts. You understand distributed workforce dynamics, labor law variability, compensation equity across geographies, and the cultural nuances of feedback and performance conversations.
• A track record of credibility with senior leaders. You’ve been brought in early, you’ve pushed back when it mattered, and you’ve been trusted with sensitive situations.
• Comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration; able to adapt quickly, take initiative, and maintain focus on impact.
• Curiosity and creativity with AI tools, including a testing mindset and eagerness to experiment with emerging technologies. Experience with coding or data analysis tools is a plus.
• Balances high EQ, rigor, and strong throughput with the levity and humility to tackle hard problems in a diverse, collaborative team

Position Location 

This role location is flexible anywhere within the United States for fully remote candidates. Please note this role may require travel (~10%) to partner countries.

We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of a U.S. employment visa at this time. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. for roles based in the U.S.

Evidence Action is an Equal Opportunity Employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply.

Benefits

The expected role range for this US position is listed below. We consider multiple factors when determining the base salary for a role, including but not limited to: role scope, program budgets, internal equity, and a candidate's qualifications and/or prior experience.

Note: Pay and benefits will be commensurate with the role specifications, local statutory requirements, and the cost of labor in the markets where we operate.

The pay range for this role: $110,000 - $155,000 per year.

This role will initially be housed at Evidence Action, with the explicit plan to transfer with the AI Access Initiative as a founding member of the team when that project is spun out as a new entity later this year.  At that point, benefits and policies may change.  For US based roles, Evidence Action provides comprehensive benefits including international health care, HSA/FSA options, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement plans with a matching component, generous and flexible leave options, as well as other employee perks on a reimbursement basis. For more information visit our careers page or ask our recruiting team!