Open Philanthropy is looking for an Executive Assistant to help support our Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness (BPP) team. Time is the most obvious bottleneck for our staff, and we think the right person in this role could reduce this bottleneck and significantly increase the team’s effectiveness.
About the Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team
Our five-person Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team, led by Program Officer Andrew Snyder-Beattie, focuses on supporting activities that could reduce the risk of a major global disruption from global catastrophic biological risk.
We have long believed that natural pandemics represent one of the biggest current risks to global welfare and stability, and the risks from engineered pandemics — whether via accidents or misuse — may grow in the future. Though we have worked in this field since 2015, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the enormous potential costs, in terms of lives lost and economic damage, and strengthened our resolve in ensuring nothing worse be allowed to come to pass.
We support activities such as the strengthening of disease surveillance, the governance of dual-use research, policy development, or other activities that could reduce the threat of a major global disruption. We see relatively little philanthropic support in this area, and believe that philanthropy may have an important role to play, distinct from that of government.
About the role
You would report to Business Operations Lead Maura Taylor and work to provide direct time-saving support to Program Officer Andrew Snyder-Beattie and solve other bottlenecks for the team as a whole.
Your core responsibilities would include:
- Providing Executive Assistant-style support to Senior Program Officer, Andrew Snyder-Beattie.
- Performing ongoing administrative and logistical tasks, such as scheduling meetings, submitting expense reports, and booking travel. You will also sometimes be called on to perform time-sensitive logistical tasks outside of standard working hours (e.g. on nights and weekends).
- Doing ad hoc research or organizational tasks (e.g. proofreading documents, downloading and organizing data in a spreadsheet, etc.).
- Helping manage a large volume of inbound emails from grantees and other external parties. As you gain context on the team’s work, you will increasingly use your own judgment to prioritize and respond to messages on behalf of others.
- Managing and organizing team documents.
- Handling confidential and potentially sensitive information carefully and professionally.
- Handling some personal tasks for members of the team, such as managing personal calendars and scheduling household appointments.
- Becoming familiar with the team’s key administrative constraints and proactively coming up with solutions for them (e.g. proposing a change to the team’s scheduling software, or automating a piece of repetitive work).
In general, it’s hard to predict everything you might be asked to tackle in this role — we’re a rapidly growing organization, and expect all staff to be flexible about what they work on and put contributing to our mission first (and this could mean occasionally supporting organizational functions or staff members outside the BPP team as needed).
Over time, a strong performer could move into a generalist or specialist role on our operations team, or grow into a more broadly scoped role supporting the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team with operationally demanding projects.
Who might be a good fit
You might be a great fit for this work if you:
- Work in a way that is consistent with our operating values of ownership, openness, calibration and inclusiveness.
- Have excellent project management, organization and prioritization skills, with the ability to anticipate and avert problems and simplify complexity while working in a dynamic, evolving environment.
- Are detail-oriented and conscientious. You have a track record of rapidly executing on your priorities without sacrificing quality.
- Are service-minded and comfortable with some amount of repetition in your work; you are motivated by the idea of doing whatever will have the most impact, even when it’s not glamorous.
- Are a strong communicator in person and in writing. You convey information, and decision processes effectively, and tend towards an information-dense, transparent communication style.
- Are eager to learn and not afraid to ask questions to check your understanding.
- Are familiar with, and interested in, effective altruism, longtermism, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, or related ideas.
Above all, we are looking for people motivated to contribute to our mission of helping others as much as we can with the resources available to us. Whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day.
Other details
- This is a full-time, permanent position with flexible work hours and location (within the US and US time zones). The team is currently split between Boston and the Bay Area.
- Unfortunately, we are not able to sponsor visas for this role.
- The baseline compensation for this role is $35.24/hour ($73,307 annually) plus an unconditional 401(k) grant of 15% of your base pay up to $20,000, which in this case would be $10,996.07.
- This compensation assumes a remote work location; there will be upwards adjustments for candidates based in Washington D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area.
- This role is eligible for overtime pay consistent with federal, state and local laws and requirements.
- We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including full health, dental, vision and life insurance, flexible work hours and location, and a stipend for ergonomic equipment.
- We would ideally like a candidate to begin as soon as possible after receiving an offer (likely in November), but we are willing to wait if the best candidate can only start later.
We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@openphilanthropy.org.