Workshops and Events Lead

Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative•Cambridge, MA

6d•Onsite

About The Position

The Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative (CBAI) is a nonprofit research organization working to advance research and education directed towards ensuring that society navigates a safe and beneficial transition to advanced AI systems. Our work takes the form of producing original research efforts and accelerating AI safety research through fellowship programs. Our inaugural summer fellowship cohort has already published a spotlight paper at the Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop at NeurIPS, accepted papers at ICLR, and some of our fellows have joined Goodfire and Redwood Research. After a successful 2025 launch, we're rapidly scaling in 2026. We will host multiple fellowship cycles, double our fellowship cohort, and quadruple our team. CBAI has been the anchor organization for AI safety in Cambridge since late 2022. We serve as the connective tissue between the AI safety research community across Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern — running workshops, convenings, and networking events that bring together researchers, students, and practitioners working on the most important problems in the field. Refer us candidates , and receive $5,000 if we hire them.

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, able to maintain trust with student group leaders, researchers, and faculty.
Operationally excellent, managing vendors, timelines, budgets, and logistics.
Excellent communicator, able to write clearly, represent the organization well, and give and receive feedback effectively.
Mission-motivated, caring about AI safety and contributing to the research community.
Entrepreneurial, 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