Chief of Staff

About Evidence Action

At Evidence Action, we deliver data-driven interventions that transform lives at an unprecedented scale. We identify neglected global health issues and deploy proven solutions, forging healthier futures for generations.

Our model operationalizes leading academic research (including from Nobel-winning economists). We measure progress and outcomes at every stage to ensure we’re making a real impact for people living in poverty and suffering from preventable or treatable health issues. Operating across 11 countries, our team of 900+ has reached over 500 million people, working closely with governments to scale these interventions.

• Our Deworm the World program has delivered over 2 billion treatments, significantly reducing worm prevalence and generating more than $23 billion in lifetime productivity gains. 
• Through Safe Water Now, we’ve saved the lives of over 15,000 children. 
• Our Accelerator explores untapped opportunities in global health, testing low-cost interventions with the greatest potential to save and improve lives. 

At Evidence Action, your colleagues are your greatest asset. You'll partner with high-caliber colleagues in an environment blending innovation, autonomy, and teamwork. Our team excels in disruptive thinking and believes in rolling up our sleeves to get things done. If you're looking to work flexibly and with purpose, join a team that delivers measurable change for millions.

The Role

Evidence Action is in the midst of an organization-wide strategy refresh, moving toward a leverage model that scales proven interventions through government systems and payers-at-scale.

The Chief of Staff supports the CEO to make that strategy move. You will own how our board engages with the strategy and evaluates our progress, drive the CEO's priorities through a global senior team, and build the operating system that tells us whether we are on track.

This is a role for a builder. Evidence Action has grown quickly and is institutionalizing its operating rhythm. Much of what this role will oversee will not exist when you arrive, or exist in an early form to build upon, and you will be expected to design it, staff it, and oversee the maintenance of it rather than carry it indefinitely. The test of what you build is whether it still runs when you are not in the room. We want someone who builds processes that survive handoff and don't need to be rebuilt each cycle. You think systematically about where automation and AI can strengthen a workflow, and where people are essential to it.

What success looks like at 12 months

• The board-approved strategy becomes a set of OKRs and KPIs, that executives, our board, staff and stakeholders can see progress against.
• The CEO's priorities move through the senior team. Owners, dates and status are visible.
• Executive and global leadership meetings produce decisions and follow-through, not just discussion.

How You Will Make an Impact

Board Strategy and Executive Management 

• Own board meeting preparation end to end: agenda design, materials, and follow-up tracking.
• Partner with the CEO on board strategy: how to sequence what comes to the board, how to frame the strategic narrative, and how to manage relationships between meetings.
• Manage the cadence, purpose, and follow-through of Global Leadership Team meetings to produce decisions and hold their outputs through to completion. This includes designing semiannual in-person convenings. 

Driving and Informing the CEO's Agenda

• Turn the CEO's priorities into owned, dated, tracked commitments across a global senior team, and drive follow-through without escalating every time.
• Support the development and maintenance of a clear map of who decides what across executive and director levels, in regions and globally, and surface where that is breaking down.
• Synthesize information from across the organization so the CEO has a current picture of organizational health, emerging risks and opportunities.
• Serve as a thought partner to the CEO: pressure-test decisions, surface trade-offs, and offer candid, independent counsel, including when the information shared  is unwelcome.

Strategy Implementation and Operating System

• Support the strategy refresh change management, helping teams navigate shifts in roles, structure and ways of working.
• Build and maintain a standing progress dashboard so the board, executives and staff see a clear picture of performance over time.
• Build and run the cadence that keeps strategy alive: quarterly business reviews, annual OKR development and quarterly tracking, KPI reporting, and an annual refresh process.

Executive Office and Strategic Initiatives Leadership

• Directly manage and provide technical direction to the Strategic Initiatives team, our internal consulting team, including quality control on analytical frameworks and conclusions.
• Translate strategic direction and operating system into workstreams the team can execute and time-limited special projects, and develop the team into strong generalist strategists.
• Provide oversight of executive and internal communications.

Requirements

What You Bring

• 7 to 12 years of experience, including management consulting (MBB, Bridgespan, Dalberg) or an equivalent background in structured problem-solving and analytical rigor, combined with exposure to international development or global health.

• A track record of operating with significant autonomy: bringing well-formed proposals forward and driving them to completion, rather than waiting for direction.

• Evidence of moving senior people who do not report to you, and of building standing quickly with people who do not already know you.

• Willingness to tell the CEO she is wrong, with reasoning rather than discomfort.

• Sound judgment about confidentiality, including under relationship pressure.

• Experience building operational systems that outlast their author: KPI tracking, review cadences and accountability structures that keep running through handoffs.

• Fluency with AI tools as a default way of working, and judgment about where they add leverage and where they don't.

• Comfort working across regions and time zones. Experience in sub-Saharan Africa or India is an advantage.

• Willingness to travel periodically, including to meet with the CEO (who is based in CA) and for semiannual leadership convenings.

Position Location

This role ideally is based in Washington, DC.

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.

Benefits

Evidence Action is open to candidates across a range of seniority levels for this role, and title, scope, and compensation will be assessed candidly with each candidate based on their experience and fit. The expected role range for this US position is listed below; base salary is determined by multiple factors, including but not limited to role scope, program budgets, internal equity, and a candidate's qualifications and 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 expected pay range for this role is $125,000 - $165,000 per year.

For US based roles, Evidence Action provides comprehensive benefits including international health care, HSA/FSA options, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement plans with a matching component, generous and flexible leave options, as well as other employee perks on a reimbursement basis. For more information visit our careers page or ask our recruiting team!

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