Overview
Position Overview
The Chief of Staff works as the right hand to the Vice President who leads CHAI's HIV, Hepatitis, and TB cluster, a growing portfolio of three disease programs working with governments, suppliers, communities, partners, and donors. You will join senior leadership on the cluster's most visible work, from donor pitches to board presentations, and see how decisions get made across a global organization. This is a rare opportunity to help shape the direction of programs that reach millions of people in low- and middle-income countries.
The role has two main parts. The first is communication and synthesis: gathering input from program teams and turning it into the decks, briefs, pre-reads, and talking points the VP uses with donors and partners. Doing this well takes an analytical mind, since you will often need to work through data or pressure-test an argument before it's ready for the VP. Presentations are a large part of this, and you will build executive-quality decks yourself. The second is leading special projects for the VP, typically cross-cutting efforts that no single program team owns. Some will be planned, such as coordinating a joint donor proposal across teams, and others will call for surge support on an urgent VP priority, such as project managing the development of an investment case. For each, you will scope the work, set the plan, bring in the right people, and see it through to a result. Across both parts of the role, you will prepare the VP for key meetings, follow up on what was agreed, and help the VP decide where to spend time by triaging incoming requests and flagging what needs a decision. You will work closely with leadership across the three programs, who keep ownership of their technical work.
The base location is flexible as long as you can consistently work East Coast hours, and some travel will be required.
Responsibilities
Communications and Synthesis
- Work with program leadership to develop presentations, briefs, memos, pre-reads, and talking points that help senior leaders understand complex topics, make decisions, and communicate priorities.
- Produce board-, CEO-, and donor-facing presentations that are clear, rigorous, and visually sharp, often on short timelines.
- Translate cost-effectiveness analysis and market and epidemiological data into narratives a non-specialist can follow and act on.
- Maintain a high standard for all materials leaving the VP's office.
Special Projects
- Lead cross-cutting projects the VP sponsors, such as coordinating a joint donor proposal across program teams: define the problem, build the work plan, bring in the right people, and see the work through to a result.
- Provide surge-support on urgent VP priorities, such as project managing the development of an investment case.
- Track milestones, owners, and dependencies for these projects, and coordinate external inputs such as consultants and vendors to keep deliverables on time and to standard.
- Identify gaps and troubleshoot challenges as they surface, taking ownership and working with cluster leadership to resolve them.
Fundraising and Resource Mobilization
- Work with teams to develop compelling donor-facing materials, including concept notes, proposals, budget narratives, and pitch decks that make a sharp case for investment.
- Prepare the VP for donor and partner meetings with briefings, positioning, talking points, and follow-up tracking.
Prioritization and Follow-Through
- Act as the VP's trusted strategic partner, developing clear analyses and actionable recommendations on the cluster's highest priorities, in close partnership and with input from the relevant program leads.
- Keep a clear view of the VP's and cluster's top objectives, and help the VP decide among competing demands and where attention is most needed.
- Help the VP frame decisions, weigh trade-offs, and anticipate what is coming across workstreams.
- Connect the cluster's OKR process to the VP's agenda, flagging work that is off track or requires the VP's input.
- Triage what comes into the VP's office, synthesizing and routing what requires a decision.
- Prepare the VP for CEO, board, senior leadership, and partner engagements.
- Follow up on agreed actions, identify blockers, and escalate issues requiring the VP's intervention.
Cluster Alignment and Coordination
- Build strong relationships across HIV, TB, and Hepatitis leadership and the wider organization, using them to anticipate risks and support alignment across teams.
- Manage the cadence of cluster leadership meetings, including agendas, decisions, and follow-ups.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree and, as a guide, six or more years of professional experience in management consulting, global health, strategy, operations, or a comparable environment.
- Exceptional at producing content, especially in PowerPoint, with a demonstrated track record of independently building executive-quality decks as well as concept notes, briefs, and talking points. Strong visual and data storytelling is essential, and candidates should be ready to share recent decks they built themselves.
- Strong technical writing skills and ability to synthesize at an executive level.
- Sound judgment about confidentiality; ability to manage sensitive information and communications with discretion.
- Fluency with AI tools in everyday work, including research, synthesis, and drafting, and the judgment to check their output and recognize where they fall short.
- Proven project management ability: building plans across a diverse set of stakeholders and driving complex projects to completion with minimal supervision.
- Experience developing fundraising or business-development materials such as proposals, concept notes, or pitches.
- Exceptional research, writing, and structured problem-solving skills, with the judgment to know what the VP actually needs.
- Comfortable creating structure for new or loosely defined work, and the drive to get hands dirty across a range of tasks.
- Confident managing up and taking initiative, with the presence to work effectively with senior leaders.
- Candour, including willingness to disagree with the VP.
- A deep commitment to CHAI's mission and values.
Competencies
We are seeking an exceptional and highly motivated individual with a genuine desire to maximize global health outcomes. An ideal candidate will be:
- Insightful: draws clear conclusions from a large amount of analysis, quickly grasps new programs and their key issues, and understands how a single workstream fits into larger priorities.
- Independent: plans an efficient approach to hard problems, proactively takes the next step, and reliably delivers.
- Practical: exercises judgment in allocating effort to what is decision-critical, and re-prioritizes as circumstances change.
- Analytical: comfortable with quantitative and qualitative data, and able to extract logical conclusions and recommendations from it.
- Communicative: navigates varied and sensitive stakeholder environments, from in-country teams to senior donor executives, and is an exceptional writer of both memos and presentation materials.
- Rigorous: holds a high bar and produces work that stands up to internal and external scrutiny.
- Adaptable: comfortable with ambiguity and shifting scope, quick to ramp on new topics, and able to develop expertise on a steep learning curve.
There is no 'perfect' candidate for this role. We are more interested in aptitude, judgment, and excitement for the work than in a fixed set of years or experiences, and we are open to a range of seniority to find the right fit. If this role excites you, please apply.
Advantages
- Experience in a fast-paced, results-oriented environment such as strategy consulting, investment banking, or pharma.
- Exposure to HIV, TB, hepatitis, or infectious-disease programming, or to market shaping, procurement, or access-to-medicines work.
- Experience developing proposals and pitches in a fundraising or development function in the social-impact space.
- Experience working remotely with a decentralized team
- Experience working in or supporting low- and middle-income countries.
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