Associate Director, Program Operations - AI Access Initiative

About the role

The AI Access Initiative (2AI) is incubated at Evidence Action and focuses on scaling AI-enabled programs that reach tens or hundreds of millions of people in poverty in low- and middle-income countries, starting with AI in Agriculture and AI in Health. 2AI India is being incubated as a project within EAII Advisors, Evidence Action's technical partner in India, with plans to spin off into an independent entity later this year. The Associate Director, Program Operations is a founding role reporting to the Program Director for Agriculture, owning the operational and logistical work that runs the program on the ground.

Key responsibilities

• Get the agriculture program running on the ground and keep it running as it grows, turning program design into sequenced, resourced activity in each state.
• Own detailed work plans, including milestones, dependencies, owners and budgets, and manage multiple priorities across states and workstreams.
• Manage day-to-day engagement with national and state government counterparts and set up state-level operations such as office logistics, approvals and vendor arrangements.
• Build structured, right-sized systems and processes that can be replicated in the next state, with change management in mind.
• Hire and onboard field and state-level staff, develop the operational team and foster a strong, values-aligned culture.
• Help the Program Director think through how operational realities should shape strategy.

Required profile

• 7-9 years of experience in program operations, program management or field delivery, ideally in international development, public health or a comparable delivery-intensive setting in India.
• Experience in an organization that grew quickly, with systems built while delivering.
• Strong delivery orientation, drive and project management ability, with a track record of complex multi-stakeholder work delivered on time.
• Comfortable managing day-to-day relationships with state government counterparts and running logistics in multi-state contexts.
• An agriculture-specific background is not required.