(Associate) Director, Program Innovation & Evidence, The AI Access Initiative

About The AI Access Initiative (2AI)

We're at an inflection point in artificial intelligence – presenting both tremendous potential opportunity and risk for people in developing countries. AI capabilities are improving on a timescale measured in months, while development systems often move on timescales measured in decades. Much of the technology needed for positive impact exists today, but few organizations exist to bridge research, deployment, and scaled implementation: we must act now to ensure AI's benefits reach people in poverty in LMICs. 

Incubated at Evidence Action, we're scaling 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 operate at the intersection of global development actors, top AI labs, and leading researchers to drive meaningful access to AI's benefits for the 3.5 billion people living in poverty globally. We 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 former Evidence Action 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.

The Role

2AI is building fast. We have a founding team, two live program portfolios, and a pipeline of opportunities that will drive significant expansion. The programs we are running have credible pathways to 100s of millions of people. While incubated at Evidence Action, we plan to spin out in Q4 ‘26.

Our Agriculture portfolio is scaling AI-enabled weather forecasting services to reach tens of millions of smallholder farmers, in close partnership with state and national governments in India and soon other low-and-middle income countries. We are seeking a rigorous, high-ownership Associate Director or Director, Program Innovation & Evidence to own the engine behind this work: testing and improving how forecasts are formatted, framed, and delivered; developing new forecast types in partnership with leading academics; and building the cost-effectiveness evidence base that determines what we scale.

This role reports into the VP, Agriculture and includes people leadership, managing at least one senior manager across the program.

You Will:

• Own forecast message testing: Run A/B tests across format, framing, and delivery mechanism to best practices for what drives farmer comprehension and behavior change. 
• Scope and pilot new forecast delivery channels: Identify and test emerging distribution channels for forecasts, such as chatbots, WhatsApp, SMS, social media, etc., assessing reach, cost, and effectiveness against existing channels.
• Oversee development of novel forecasts: Partner with academics to develop high-impact forecasts of new types, managing a roadmap for how new forecasts are prioritized, developed, and benchmarked. This could include hiring and managing post-doctoral students to support in model benchmarking or dataset support.
• Support monitoring and evaluation (M&E): Coordinate with in-country teams to implement M&E and identify concrete ways to improve programs based on the insights.
• Lead cost-effectiveness analysis: Develop and update cost-effectiveness (CE) analyses for our agriculture programs, and stay abreast of the emerging evidence base.
• Scope other agriculture innovations: Assess new directions for the portfolio, including benchmarking, advisory services, and entirely new intervention types.
• Partner with stakeholders: Create new and nurture existing relationships with academic institutions, research groups, delivery partners, and other agriculture organizations.
• Develop best practices and thought leadership: Across all of the above, build best practices and replicable toolkits that can be applied elsewhere by others. Share key learnings with the sector through toolkits, blogs, and other public-good resources.

Requirements

The ideal candidate is an exceptional builder with the ability to drive outcomes in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment. Given the startup nature of this work, we seek contributors with high throughput, strong work ethic, and willingness to lean in and work extended hours.

You will likely have:

• 7-10+ years' experience as a builder in international development, consulting, or an agriculture adjacent organization. 
• Experience designing and running randomized or quasi-experimental evaluations (RCTs, A/B tests, or similar) – especially to measure behavior change.
• Track record translating evaluation results into product or program iteration, e.g. using comprehension or uptake data to redesign message content, format, or delivery channel.
• A proven track record of significantly scaling organizations and/or programs to deliver impact at scale, preferably in close partnership with national governments.
• Training or early career experience in a high-rigor environment (e.g., top-tier management consulting, high-growth NGO program leadership, strategy/econ research) and the ability to rapidly get up to speed in new technical areas including AI/ML forecasting concepts.
• Demonstrated success leading international development programs from idea to scaled delivery, including managing multi-stakeholder coalitions with governments, research institutions, NGO implementers, and private sector partners.
• A track record as a strong people manager and builder: able to set clear standards, empower others, and cultivate a high-performance culture across distributed and field-based teams. 
• High EQ and the ability to influence across diverse partners, from AI/forecasting researchers to frontline delivery staff to senior government officials.
• Strong fluency with AI tools, and eager to experiment, learn, and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration; can define and test hypotheses, adapt quickly, and maintain focus on impact.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to synthesize complex technical ideas (e.g., AI/ML weather forecasting language) into crisp narratives for different audiences.
• Willingness and ability to travel extensively internationally (~20%) to India and other low-and-middle income countries.
• Passion for the mission of ensuring that the benefits of frontier AI reach the world's poorest populations, while mitigating its downside risks.

Position Location

This role location is flexible anywhere within the United States for fully remote candidates. Please note this role requires significant travel (~20%) 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 is: $142,000 - $162,000 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!