Cause Prioritization Lead

GiveWell

4d • Remote

About The Position

GiveWell is seeking a Cause Prioritization Lead to own and improve our cause prioritization process, develop a portfolio of early-stage grants across emerging cause areas, and rapidly respond to promising new opportunities that are unusual for GiveWell, do not fit with our existing grantmaking teams and may require innovative approaches to investigation. As part of our lean research team, you will have an outsized influence on our funding decisions and help us save and improve lives on a global scale. You’ll create and lead ambitious research agendas, answer complex questions, and inform high-impact grantmaking decisions by combining rigorous evidence review, cost-effectiveness modeling, and thoughtful judgment. The Cause Prioritization lead will join GiveWell at Senior Program Officer level. You will build a sub-team within the New Areas team and will report to our New Areas team lead.

Requirements

• Quantitatively-oriented advanced degrees and substantial relevant experience using empirical tools to make rigorous, evidence-based decisions in the real world.
• Approximately 5-10 years of post-grad work experience.
• Ability to get up to speed quickly on new topics.
• Comfortable task-switching.
• Comfortable pivoting focus as new information is learned and continuously reassessing promisingness.
• Ability to impose structure on a broad and undefined problem.
• Ability to develop and articulate a vision to your team.
• Ability to build processes to execute that vision.
• Excited by people management.
• Takes other team members' professional development seriously.
• Ability to provide a supportive environment whilst also delivering constructive feedback.
• Ability to quickly hone in on the crux of the argument when assessing other people's work, probing on the most decision-relevant assumptions even in fields where you have limited contextual knowledge.
• Entrepreneurial mindset; willingness to fill gaps, design new programs, find implementers, or set up new funding mechanisms.
• Ability to make bets under uncertainty.
• Routinely thinks about and surfaces the value judgments, background knowledge, and strategic commitments that underlie work.
• Understands the potential effects of mistaken mental models, and strives to improve own and team's mental models.
• Dislikes it when people express strong confidence in views that don’t seem to rely on commensurate evidence.
• Carefully and legibly communicates about confidence levels.
• Appreciates the value of an excellent reputation and strong relationships.
• Ability to moderate directness and intensity when communicating with external folks.
• Ability to figure out the most important questions to answer, go deep on details where they matter, and reassess mental models based on learning.

Nice To Haves

• Commensurate amount of relevant experience if not holding advanced degrees.

Responsibilities

• Improving our cause prioritization process to identify promising emerging areas for grantmaking; ensuring that process combines evidence, cost-effectiveness modelling and our own judgement, and is continuously responsive to new information and external feedback.
• Overseeing a portfolio of grant investigations and grant management in each of the highest priority emerging cause areas, and starting to build a research agenda including identifying ways to learn about key uncertainties through the initial grants that we make.
• Communicating externally about our work and building a network of people across implementers, funders, and academia whose expertise span a broad range of cause areas, to help source new ideas.
• Managing a team to execute these goals, and supporting the professional development of other team members. Creating a culture that is agile and willing to respond to new and unusual opportunities.
• Directly investigating more complicated grantmaking opportunities yourself. This could include investigating types of programs that are newer to GiveWell; for example, programs earlier in the product development cycle or programs to support government prioritization and planning.

Benefits

• Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (100% of premiums covered within the US for employee and dependents)
• Four weeks of paid time off per year
• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
• Automatic contribution equal to 5% of gross salary into 403(b) retirement plan (for US-based staff)
• Relocation expenses covered for candidates who wish to move to office locations
• Visa sponsorship for US work visas (case-by-case basis)
• Relocation expenses covered for US visa sponsorship (up to 100%, case-by-case basis)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed