Director, Finance and Operations, The AI Access Initiative

Evidence Action

3h•$155,000 - $170,000•Remote

About The Position

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 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. Our approach We’re scaling AI-enabled big bets to benefit tens or hundreds of millions of individuals living in poverty. We will focus both on delivering near-term, tractable direct impact and supporting governments to establish an enabling environment 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. As part of this work, we will create “public good,” open-sourced playbooks, toolkits, and insights that define how to design and launch tractable and impactful AI-enabled programs. 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 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, and are now running deeper analysis on opportunities in global health. The Role We are seeking a high-ownership and rigorous finance and operations leader to help architect the institutional backbone of a rapidly scaling AI-focused global development organization. This founding role will partner closely with the CEO and leadership team on financial strategy, organizational scaling, and operational infrastructure. The right person thrives at the intersection of institutional rigor and startup pragmatism. You will set the strategy, own the outcomes, and serve as the internal expert, while identifying, contracting, and managing high-quality external partners: accountants, attorneys, payroll providers, auditors, insurance brokers, and state compliance vendors. You are comfortable in a high-ownership, high-ambiguity role, and excited by the opportunity to define an organization’s operating system from scratch. We are open to this role being structured as a full-time employee or a senior fractional/contract engagement for the right candidate.

Requirements

8+ years in finance, strategic operations, consulting, nonprofit leadership, startup operations, or related fields, including significant experience managing organizational finance and budgeting.
Experience sourcing and managing outside counsel, accounting firms, auditors, insurance brokers, and payroll providers — you know how to get the most out of external partners.
Comfort operating at both strategic and operational levels: you can set policy and also handle the detail work required to ensure nothing slips.
Strong written communication skills; able to translate complex financial and legal concepts clearly for board members, program staff, and funders.
High ownership mindset: you hold yourself accountable for outcomes, not just tasks, and you proactively surface and resolve problems before they escalate.
Comfortable with ambiguity and early-stage environments; you can build structure from scratch without waiting to be told exactly how.
Collaborative and low-ego; you work well with a small, fast-moving leadership team and can flex between big-picture strategy and detailed execution.
Mission-aligned: you are motivated by the opportunity to ensure that the legal and financial infrastructure of this organization is a platform for impact, not a bottleneck.

Nice To Haves

CPA, JD, or equivalent professional credential strongly preferred; nonprofit-specific training or certification (e.g., CGAP, CNAP) a plus.
Experience with nonprofit finance, compliance, and 501(c)(3) environments strongly preferred: e.g., Form 990, single audit, charitable solicitation registration, IRS rebuttable presumption, and state-level tax exemptions.

Responsibilities

Establish high-caliber financial systems and reporting: Build and manage grant tracking, reporting calendars, and spend-down requirements across all transferred and new grants; own year-end audit, Form 990, budgeting, and board-level financial reporting.
Run analyses to drive strategic organizational decisions: Build financial models, scenario plans, and organizational forecasts to support strategic decision-making in a fast-scaling environment.
Drive organizational spinout and setup: Own financial, legal, and compliance workstreams to stand up the AI Access Initiative as an independent 501(c)(3), including entity creation, payroll, benefits, and staff transfers.
Design, procure, and oversee a lean, high-performing finance and compliance ecosystem: Manage outsourced partners (e.g., accounting, audit, legal, payroll, insurance, and HR) while ensuring strong institutional controls without unnecessary bureaucracy.
Enable our expansion: Design financial systems capable of supporting rapid international scaling and increasingly complex funding structures.
Drive high-leverage resource allocation: Partner with leadership to build a culture of analytically rigorous budget allocation and organizational decision-making.
Build and own compliance infrastructure: Own critical compliance and institutional risk infrastructure, including charitable registration, insurance, governance, and regulatory filings.
Support governance and board operations: Establish board meeting cadence, minute-keeping, conflict-of-interest disclosures, and fiduciary orientation for new members.
Manage legal affairs & contracting: Serve as the primary internal point of contact for all legal matters; review and negotiate vendor contracts, grant agreements, MOUs, and partnership arrangements, while ensuring IP protections are in place for open-source assets.