Head of Events (Safe AI Forum)

The Safe AI Forum (SAIF) is a fiscally sponsored project of FAR AI focused on advancing global action and collaboration to minimize extreme AI risks. The project was co-founded by Fynn Heide and Conor McGurk in late 2023. SAIF’s main program is the International Dialogues on AI Safety (IDAIS), which brings together senior computer scientists and AI governance experts to build international collaboration on these risks. Our most recent IDAIS event was featured on the front page of the Financial Times. We are looking for a Head of Events, or an Events Manager for a more junior candidate, to join our team.

FAR AI is a technical AI research non-profit, focused on ensuring the safe development and deployment of frontier AI technologies. They support our work in a variety of ways and we work closely with their team.

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About the Role

One of our main routes to impact is through our high profile events bringing together international actors on AI Safety. We need someone who has deep operational or events expertise to join the team and ensure we can keep running these events at a high level of competence, professionalism and focus on impact that is expected from the very senior stakeholders we work with.

Beyond our core IDAIS events, of which we expect to run two annually, we are also planning to ramp up and run a broader set of smaller, lower profile workshops and events throughout the year. We will also host small organization retreats a couple times a year. You would work closely with the rest of the team including the executive team and research team on many aspects of the events: strategy, agendas, stakeholder communications, and more.

Key responsibilities:

• Event management and planning: Lead and coordinate impactful events, overseeing their implementation from start to finish. This includes venue selection, attendee travel, catering, attendee communications, security, on-site staff, AV, infosecurity and more.
• Operations, administration and budgeting: Manage the event budget, ensure we are being prudent with our spending, negotiate with vendors, hire contractors, etc.
• Stakeholder communication: Communicate directly with senior stakeholders on various aspects of the event, and maintain good relationships with any partners we work with on the event.
• Project management & strategy: Work with the rest of the team to ensure that events, agendas, and attendees lists are designed in such a way that maximizes the impact of the events.
• Other operations: If you have extra bandwidth to support the team beyond core events work, there is a broad remit of other work you could assist with throughout SAIF.

About You

You are excited by or have a long history of running successful events or operations teams. You have worked with high profile senior stakeholders, managing relationships and ensuring they have positive experiences. Ideally, you have worked and done operations work in many different countries in different contexts. You feel confident that you can deliver events end-to-end that meet the high standard of quality expected by high-profile figures such as senior politicians, academics, and CEOs.

Strongly Preferred:

• Event management experience: You’ve coordinated events with very senior individuals before that receive meaningful public attention. You’ve run the event end-to-end, and feel comfortable with every aspect of ensuring the event runs well.
• Stakeholder management experience: You’ve worked with a variety of high-profile individuals for events or other operations you’ve run such as CEOs, senior academics, politicians and heads-of-states.
• Administrative and financial experience: You’ve managed budgets, arranged visas, negotiated with vendors, etc.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills: You communicate clearly and consciously, keeping in mind the language of your target audience. You can develop a communication strategy and oversee its implementation.

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with AI Safety or AI Governance: Our events are focused on ensuring AI is developed safely. This will be the primary goal of the events, and a key point of interest for most of our stakeholders. Being well-versed in how we may accomplish this goal, and what the interests of our various stakeholders may be, is an asset.
• Experience in people management: Although we do not expect this role to immediately have any reports, we expect that you may be managing contractors, various vendors, or coordinating onsite staff. People management skills would be an asset.
• External communications: You’ve run Twitter accounts, worked with journalists, or otherwise done public communications in a professional setting.
• International experience: You’ve run events around the world, coordinating visas, flights, and operating in environments where you may not have the necessary language skills.
• Academic experience: You’ve worked closely with academics in the past and understand their needs and preferences.
• International relations experience: You’ve worked in diplomatic contexts or are familiar with them.

Logistics

You will be an employee of FAR AI, a 501(c)(3) research non-profit, and could choose to be fully remote or in-person in Berkeley.

• Location: We sponsor visas for in-person employees who work from Berkeley and prefer employees to be based in North America for timezone reasons. While we can’t guarantee that any given visa application will be successful, we have previously successfully sponsored visas for several team members, including those in operations.
• Hours: Full-time (40 hours/week).
• Compensation: $100,000 - $130,000 year* depending on experience and location. We will also pay for work-related travel and equipment expenses. We offer catered lunch and dinner at the FAR offices in Berkeley if you work from there. *For exceptional candidates with an outstanding track record we may be able to offer additional compensation.
• Application process: Our application process will likely include several interviews and one or more paid work tasks. We expect that filling in the application form should take less than 5 minutes.

Please apply! If you have any questions about the role, please do get in touch at saif-talent@far.ai.