Evidence Action
Website:
evidenceaction.org
Job details:
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.
- Agriculture: We have an ambitious goal to reach 100M+ farmers with AI-enabled weather forecasts, expand forecast R&D to generate novel forecasts, and build public and private sector (WhatsApp, telcos) delivery channels to deliver new, LLM-generated voice and image content that maximizes behavior change.
- Health: Here, our initial goal is to scale AI-enabled clinical decision support to 20M+ people via telemedicine platforms, dramatically improving diagnosis and health outcomes at a national level. We are also planning to explore and test novel interventions for low-resource settings, including direct-to-consumer (DTC) health interventions.
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.
About 2AI India And EAII Advisors
EAII Advisors, Evidence Action's technical partner in India, supports state governments in delivering evidence-based public health programs. Operating across 10 states, EAII Advisors provides technical assistance to ministries of health, education, water, and women and child development, reducing health burdens in impoverished communities and improving the long-term wellbeing of children and families.
2AI India is being incubated as a project within EAII Advisors, with plans to spin off into an independent entity at the end of this year. We are hiring a founding team: the first hires will shape the culture, establish the operating model, and own early wins before the organization scales.
Roles And Responsibilities
The Program Director for Agriculture is the domain expert and relationship anchor for 2AI's first India program area. Agriculture is where 2AI India starts, beginning with AI-enabled weather forecasting and advisory services for smallholder farmers, with potential to expand into adjacent interventions over time. This person brings both substantive knowledge of the Indian agriculture sector and a network across government, research, and implementing organizations that can be activated quickly to accelerate program design and partnership development.
This is a founding role, which means it is not only a strategy and relationships job. At this stage, everyone executes. We are looking for someone genuinely energized by what AI can do for farmers, who brings opinions and hypotheses rather than only process, and who is not so tied to any one institution's approach that it limits our ability to build something new.
Program Strategy and Design
- Owns the strategy and multi-year plan for 2AI India's agriculture portfolio, and translates it into annual workplans with milestones and owners
- Designs and oversees pilots across dissemination channels and intervention types, each with a clear learning agenda agreed with the Evidence Lead
- Identifies which AI-enabled interventions are worth pursuing in the Indian context, forms a view on why, and revises it as evidence accumulates
Government and Partner Relationships
- Builds and holds trusted relationships with national and state agriculture departments, relevant central ministries, meteorological agencies, and agricultural universities and research institutions
- Anticipates the needs of government counterparts while holding partnerships accountable to delivery commitments, and shows understanding of how policy decisions actually get made
- Manages relationships with partners in implementation, research, technology, and AI labs, coordinating them toward a coherent program rather than a set of parallel projects
- Represents 2AI India's agriculture work externally, including to funders and in sector forums
Hands-On Execution
- Does the early operational and analytical work personally. This is a founding-team role with a limited delegation layer underneath it.
- Works with the Associate Director, Program Operations to translate program design into action at the state level, bringing deep knowledge of state level realities to program strategy and management
Team Building
- Recruits, coaches, and manages the agriculture team as it grows, including state-level and field staff, and sets the performance standard for it
- Builds a team culture that connects to 2AI globally, not only to the India office
- Fosters a strong, values-aligned culture as a leader across the organization
- Willingness to roll-up sleeves and pitch in to the organization building activities required of a founding team
Disclaimer: The duties and responsibilities described are not a comprehensive list and additional tasks may be assigned to the employee from time to time.
Requirements
Essentials
- Relevant professional background: 10-12 years of experience in agriculture, rural development, or a closely adjacent field, with a track record of scaling programs to reach large numbers of farmers.
- Deep sector knowledge: real depth in Indian smallholder agriculture, including farmer contexts, state-level agricultural systems in more than one state, relevant government ministries, and the ecosystem of implementing organizations and research institutions.
- Building & maintaining relationships: brings an established network across government, research, and implementation in Indian agriculture, and has also succeeded in forging new relationships rather than only maintaining inherited ones. Uses discretion, reads the policy decision process accurately at both state and central levels, and is trusted
- Strategic thinking: sees the gap before it is named, and can hold an ambitious direction and a realistic view of constraints at the same time. Moves between operational detail and portfolio-level logic without losing either
- Experience standing up a new program, venture, or state operation from scratch
- Forward-looking on AI: genuinely energized by what AI can do for farmers, current on what is actually working, and motivated to figure out what that looks like in the Indian context. Brings hypotheses, not just processes
- Builder instincts: Experience standing up a new program, venture, or state operation from scratch. Low ego, no task too small, and willing to do the operational and analytical work personally at this stage
- People management: has built teams that were cohesive, motivated, and mission-driven, and can point to people who grew under them
- Clear communication: translates technical information into common language, and writes and presents compellingly for government, funder, and technical audiences
- Comfort with ambiguity: thrives in high-growth scenarios, adjusts quickly to shifting timelines and priorities, and is comfortable with a direction that may change every three to six months in the near term
What Success Looks Like
In the First 6 Months:
- You are implementing a program strategy for agriculture you co-designed with the 2AI India Country Director, with clear prioritization, milestones, and ongoing learnings incorporated via quick feedback loops
- At least one substantive state or central government relationship has moved from introduction to an active working conversation about delivery
- A first pilot or design partnership is scoped, with a learning agenda agreed with the Evidence Lead, and you know what would cause you to stop it
- You have hired, or supported the Associate Director, Program Operations in hiring, the capacity the program needs at both the national and state level during it's initial launch and scale-up
Compensation
Competitive and commensurate with the individual's credentials, experience, and previous pay scale.
Benefits
EAII provides a comprehensive benefits package for employees. Benefits include:
- Comprehensive health insurance with IPD and OPD provisions
- Life and Accidental insurance
- PF, ESIC and Gratuity as per statutory requirements
- Generous leave
- Mental and physical wellbeing benefits
- Learning & Development benefits
- Avenues for engagement and recognition
Note: This role will be open for applications until 9 October 2026. Please apply at your earliest convenience. We may close this search earlier than the specified date if we find the right fit. Due to the volume of applications received, we will only be able to contact shortlisted candidates.
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