Program Director, Agriculture (AI Access Initiative)

About the role

The AI Access Initiative (2AI) is incubated at Evidence Action and is scaling two programs, AI in Agriculture and AI in Health, to reach tens or hundreds of millions of people in poverty in low- and middle-income countries. 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 Program Director for Agriculture is a founding role: the domain expert and relationship anchor for the first India program area, responsible for strategy, partnerships and hands-on execution.

Key responsibilities

• Own the strategy and multi-year plan for the agriculture portfolio and turn it into annual workplans with milestones and owners.
• Design and oversee pilots across dissemination channels and intervention types, with a clear learning agenda agreed with the Evidence Lead.
• Identify which AI-enabled interventions are worth pursuing in India and revise the view as evidence accumulates.
• Build relationships with state and national agriculture departments, central ministries, meteorological agencies and agricultural universities and research institutions, and manage partners in implementation, research and AI labs.
• Represent 2AI India externally to funders and in sector forums.
• Do early operational and analytical work personally and work with the Associate Director, Program Operations to translate design into action at the state level.
• Recruit, coach and manage the growing agriculture team, including state-level and field staff, and build a values-aligned culture.

Required profile

• 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 knowledge of Indian smallholder agriculture, including farmer contexts, state-level systems in more than one state, relevant ministries and the ecosystem of implementing organizations and research institutions.
• An established network across government, research and implementation, able to forge new relationships and read the policy decision process at state and central levels.
• Experience setting up a new program, venture or state operation from scratch.
• Genuine interest in what AI can do for farmers, with hypotheses rather than only processes.