Manager / Senior Manager, Incubation, The AI Access Initiative

About The AI Access Initiative (2AI)

We’re at an inflection point in artificial intelligence, presenting both tremendous potential opportunity and risk for people in developing countries. AI capabilities are improving on a timescale measured in months, while development systems often move on timescales measured in decades. Much of the technology needed for positive impact exists today, but few organizations exist to bridge research, deployment, and scaled implementation: we must act now to ensure AI’s benefits reach people in poverty in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Incubated at Evidence Action, we’re rapidly scaling The AI Access Initiative, an organization focused on scaling AI-enabled ‘big bets’ to benefit tens or hundreds of millions of people in poverty in LMICs. We operate at the intersection of global development actors, top AI labs, and leading researchers to drive meaningful access to AI’s benefits for the 3.5 billion people living in poverty globally. Given the scale of opportunity, we expect our portfolio to expand substantially, but to start, we’re scaling two programs focused on AI in Agriculture and AI in Health across Africa and Asia.

We are led by former Evidence Action CEO Kanika Bahl, a founding member of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, and advised by Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer; Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic; and Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs for Alphabet and Google. This work builds on Evidence Action’s track record reaching 530M+ people with cost-effective, evidence-based programs across 9 countries in Africa and Asia, with a focus on last-mile delivery.

The Incubator

Our Agriculture and Health portfolios came out of a cross-sector analysis of near- and medium-term AI opportunities in LMICs. The Incubator is the engine that produces the next set of interventions ripe for scale. It is a new, 3-5 person research and incubation team with a single mandate: find the AI-enabled interventions that could plausibly clear a field-recognized cost-effectiveness bar at scale, test them and iterate on the delivery model, and hand the ones that survive to a program team as a fundable Big Bet.

The Incubator runs a four-stage pipeline, modeled on Evidence Action’s Accelerator, which derisked programs like syphilis screening in pregnancy and in-line chlorination before they scaled: rapid screens (days), deep dives (weeks), on-the-ground pilots with light-touch monitoring and evaluation (M&E) (months), and a repeatable stack of tools, partners, and playbooks that gets easier to reuse each cycle, all aimed at producing new Big Bets. Most ideas will not make it all the way through; the team’s value comes from making clear, fast, well-reasoned calls on which to set aside and which to advance to a fundable Big Bet.

The Role

The Manager / Senior Manager, Incubation does the core analytical and field work behind 2AI’s next Big Bets. Reporting to the Incubation Director, you will own a portfolio of potential programs and pieces of the pipeline from first screen to pilot handoff. For each program you own, you will run the assessment end to end and make the recommendation on what advances, what pauses, and what is set aside.

This is a builder role in a start-up organization. The screening process, the deep-dive template, and the pilot playbook do not exist yet. You will help create them, then use them, then improve them.

What success looks like in 12-18 months:

• You have identified multiple AI Big Bets for 2AI to invest in at the pilot stage, each backed by an evidence review, a cost-effectiveness estimate, and a clear recommendation 2AI leadership could act on.
• You have helped design on-the-ground pilots that answer decision-relevant questions.
• You have built the AI-enabled workflows needed to accelerate and improve the Incubator’s screening and deep-dive process, and that process is written down and in use across the team.

You Will:

Own the case for (or against) potential Big Bets: an opportunity to use AI to improve the lives of millions of people in LMICs

• Own a portfolio of program due diligence end to end: take each AI-enabled intervention you own from long list to rapid screen to deep dive, and be accountable for the quality and speed of the assessment you recommend to leadership.
• Drive the thinking, not just the research:…