Chief People Officer, The AI Access Initiative

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 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Incubated at Evidence Action, we're rapidly 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 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. 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 across Africa and Asia.

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.

The Role

The AI Access Initiative is at an early and critical juncture. We’re building a high-performing, globally distributed team from the ground up. We are hiring a Chief People Officer to define and scale people operations for our team. This includes building lean systems to hire, onboard, and retain top talent to unlock meaningful upside for people in poverty globally. While we are currently incubated at Evidence Action, we plan to spin out on November 1, 2026 as an independent organization. New employees will be hired directly by 2AI.

This role sits at the intersection of talent, performance, and organizational design, leveraging AI to ensure thoughtful design of efficient systems. The CPO will lead the global talent and human resource function, have responsibilities to support the regional and country human resource teams, and report directly to the CEO, acting as a strategic thought partner and tactical operator on people decisions. You care deeply about the mission. You want to support the humans on this team including their growth, wellbeing, and ability to focus on work that matters, while building the AI-native systems and culture that make achieving our incredibly ambitious mission possible. You are a fast-moving but thoughtful builder, and excited to drive the engine behind the growth of a fast-scaling organization - growing by 40+ people in the coming year alone. And you are committed to creating a team of “A” players, including investing heavily in recruitment to attract top talent, and creating a high-performance, high-accountability culture that can move at the speed of AI. 

You Will:

Design and execute the strategy for the People function:

• Set the vision and build out the strategy for the talent structure and function: drive effective and high-quality execution of the strategy; and ensure that an integrated people function (inclusive of acquisition, retention/development, and HR administration) is aligned to our organizational values and priorities.  
• Create an AI-native set of people systems and processes: Ensure that you are using AI to drive meaningful efficiencies across recruitment, onboarding, hiring, and performance management, while helping create an AI-native culture at 2AI.  

Build the hiring engine 

• Own recruiting end to end: Run every stage of the hiring process in partnership with program teams, including sourcing, pipeline development, structured assessment design, offer construction, and close.
• Build pipelines before we need them: For senior and specialist roles, the best candidates aren't applying, they're being found. Develop sourcing strategies and maintain warm networks in markets where top talent is scarce.
• Design structured hiring processes with rigorous assessments: Ensure every role has identified key criteria, consistent evaluation, and interview panels that systematically test for core criteria and cultural fit.
• Assess AI engagement in candidates: Design creative processes to evaluate how candidates actually use AI tools, and maintain a current picture of frontier fluency in tools and capabilities.
• Build hiring capacity across the organization: Coach hiring managers to be exceptional interviewers, give calibrated feedback, and make decisions efficiently. The quality of our hires is one of the most important drivers of organizational success.

Design the organization

• Design structure ahead of growth: Partner with leadership on role design, team boundaries, reporting structures, and the sequencing of hires.
• Build and maintain high talent density: Create a culture where excellence is recognized and areas of growth are rapidly addressed. Know who is performing at or above role expectations, who is developing, and who is at risk. 
• Navigate performance issues with good judgment: Coach leaders to move quickly from diagnosis to clear feedback to decisive action, with accountability to the mission and care for the individual. Encourage leaders to make compassionate but timely exits where needed. 
• Connect talent insights to organizational planning: Translate the talent picture into concrete decisions on headcount, development investment, and how we structure roles.

Build people systems that scale

• Own the cultural formation in a global context: Has an understanding of and experience in 1) building and supporting cross-cultural teams and 2) maintaining a shared, global culture. Develops this across the people process from designing recruitment processes that select for values alignment, to shaping the first 90 days.
• Design onboarding that sets people up for success: Build a structured experience that orients new hires to the mission, their role, our values, the team, and what great performance looks like.
• Design a performance system people find genuinely useful: Create a process for honest conversations, meaningful development, and clear expectations.
• Build compensation frameworks that are equitable and defensible across geographies: We operate across LMIC and high-income country contexts. Develop a philosophy and structure that is fair, transparent, grounded in data, and explainable to staff.
• Use data and AI to drive people decisions: Build and maintain the tools and dashboards that give leadership a clear picture of headcount, attrition, hiring velocity, compensation equity, and team health.
• Stand up the people infrastructure for an independent entity: Source and manage a professional employer organization (PEO) or employer of record (EOR), and build the employment contracts, payroll, benefits, and policies required to operate post-spinout.
• Ensure compliance and safeguarding across operating jurisdictions: Understand the labor law landscape in our operating countries to keep us compliant. Establish the code of conduct, reporting channels, and investigation protocols we need to operate responsibly across our program countries and to meet donor standards.
• Own workforce planning and the people budget: Partner with the CFO to build headcount plans and cost models that reflect real hiring timelines and sequencing, and hold the plan as roles are added, changed, or deferred. 

Strategic thought partnership

• Be brought in early on people decisions: Build credibility with leaders so they consult you when they're thinking through a hire, a team structure, or a difficult personnel situation, not once they've already decided.
• Push back when something doesn't feel right: If a hire doesn't align with what the structured process is telling us, say so. If a promotion is premature or a restructure creates unsurfaced risk, name it.
• Handle sensitive employee situations with discretion and judgment: Know when to escalate, when to resolve directly, and when to bring in external expertise. Protect the individual and the organization simultaneously.

Requirements

This is not a role for someone who wants to steward a mature HR department with established processes and a full team. It is for someone who is comfortable standing up hiring, performance, and compensation systems from scratch. Our ability to act at that speed depends on getting the right people into the right seats, repeatedly.

We are still actively scoping our leadership roles and structure, reflecting the dynamism of this fast-growing phase of the organization. Evidence Action is open to candidates across a range of seniority levels for this role; title, scope, and compensation will be assessed candidly with each candidate throughout the process based on their experience and fit.

You will likely have:

• 12+ years in human resources, people operations, or talent roles, including senior leadership of a people function, with meaningful time spent in organizations that required you to build rather than inherit.
• A track record as a builder: you have designed hiring, performance, or compensation systems from scratch, and can clearly separate what you created from what you inherited.
• Demonstrated experience in full-cycle recruiting, including sourcing and closing senior hires in competitive or thin-talent markets.
• Experience working in or across LMIC contexts. You understand distributed workforce dynamics, labor law variability, compensation equity across geographies, and the cultural nuances of feedback and performance conversations.
• A track record of credibility with senior leaders. You've been brought in early, you've pushed back when it mattered, and you've been trusted with sensitive situations.
• Strong analytical instincts; you build tools and analyze data yourself rather than waiting for a dedicated analyst.
• Curiosity and creativity with AI tools, including a testing mindset and eagerness to experiment with emerging technologies. You can assess AI fluency in candidates because you practice it yourself.
• Comfort with ambiguity and fast iteration. Balances high EQ, rigor, and strong throughput with the levity and humility to tackle hard problems in a diverse, collaborative team. Ability to manage multiple competing deadlines, dynamically reprioritize as evolving program needs and resources require, embrace and structure ambiguity, and drive tasks to completion in a fast-paced environment
• Experience standing up employment infrastructure for a new or spinning-out entity is a strong plus.

Position Location

This role location is flexible anywhere within the United States for fully remote candidates. 

We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of a U.S. employment visa at this time. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. for roles based in the U.S.

Evidence Action is an Equal Opportunity Employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply.

Benefits

The expected role range for this US position is listed below. We consider multiple factors when determining the base salary for a role, including but not limited to: role scope, program budgets, internal equity, and a candidate's qualifications and/or prior experience.

Note: Pay and benefits will be commensurate with the role specifications, local statutory requirements, and the cost of labor in the markets where we operate.

The pay range for this role is: 220,000 - 240,000 USD per year.

While we are currently incubated at Evidence Action, 2AI plans to spin out on November 1, 2026 as an independent organization. New employees will be hired directly by 2AI. We will offer a comprehensive benefits package, including health, vision, and dental, retirement plans, generous and flexible leave options, as well as other employee perks.