Workshops and Events Lead

Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative•Cambridge, MA

43d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative (CBAI) is a nonprofit research organization focused on advancing AI safety research and education. They aim to ensure society navigates a safe and beneficial transition to advanced AI systems through original research and fellowship programs. CBAI has been a key player in the Cambridge AI safety community since late 2022, connecting researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern through workshops, convenings, and networking events. They are expanding their operations significantly in 2026, planning to double their fellowship cohort and quadruple their team.

Requirements

Exceptional event producer with experience planning and executing complex, multi-stakeholder events, ideally including residential or multi-day formats.
Natural community builder with an understanding of what makes a community worth belonging to and how to design experiences that strengthen relationships and generate intellectual value.
Credible interlocutor in research spaces, with familiarity with AI safety research being a strong plus.
Excellent relationship builder, capable of maintaining trust with student group leaders, researchers, and faculty.
Operationally excellent, managing vendors, timelines, budgets, and logistics effectively.
Excellent communicator, writing clearly and representing CBAI well to external audiences.
Mission-motivated, caring about AI safety and contributing to the research community.
Entrepreneurial mindset, able to identify opportunities and build programs that don't yet fully exist.
Meaningful experience in event production, academic program coordination, or research community building, ideally in a university, think tank, or mission-driven research organization context.
Demonstrated judgment in curating rooms that produce real intellectual and professional value.
U.S. work authorization required (OPT accepted).

Nice To Haves

Existing relationships in the AI safety, AI governance, or broader Cambridge research community.
Experience with residential or retreat-style event formats.
Familiarity with the Cambridge and greater Boston venue and vendor landscape.
Experience working with or within university student organizations or academic departments.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end planning and execution of the Harvard-MIT AI Safety Workshops, currently held 5 times per academic year in Essex, MA, with ~40 participants and ~10 guests per workshop.
Work with the Harvard AI Safety Student Team (AISST) and MIT AI Alignment (MAIA) to scale the program from 5 to 8 workshops per academic calendar year.
Curate and invite guests from frontier AI safety research organizations — including Redwood Research, METR, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, OpenAI's safety teams, and Cambridge-area academics.
Lead participant selection in collaboration with AISST and MAIA, ensuring cohort quality and diversity across partnering university groups.
Design workshop programming: session formats, discussion structures, speaker slots, and career programming.
Gather and synthesize participant and guest feedback to continuously improve workshop quality.
Identify and source opportunities for high-visibility, weekend-long specialized research workshops in partnership with Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern research groups.
Build relationships with faculty and research group leads to develop workshop concepts that serve genuine research needs.
Own end-to-end execution: venue, logistics, programming design, speaker coordination, and participant experience.
As the portfolio grows, take on a managerial dimension — coordinating contractors, volunteers, or support staff to run larger events effectively.
Own and run CBAI's monthly Cambridge AI safety networking events, serving as the connective tissue between researchers, students, and practitioners across the city.
Curate invitee lists, manage outreach, and create programming that makes each event genuinely worth attending.
Build and maintain CBAI's relationships with the broader Cambridge AI safety community, using events as a vehicle for strengthening the ecosystem.