Program Director, -Burden Diseases

About OpenAI Foundation

AI is already changing how people work, learn, and access care. It has the potential to unlock extraordinary benefits—faster medical breakthroughs, accelerated scientific discovery, more personalized services in healthcare and education, new tools for creativity and invention, higher productivity and economic growth, improved public services like transportation systems, and so much more.

AI is already changing how people work, learn, and access care. It has the potential to unlock extraordinary benefits—faster medical breakthroughs, accelerated scientific discovery, more personalized services in healthcare and education, new tools for creativity and invention, higher productivity and economic growth, improved public services like transportation systems, and so much more.

But building powerful systems to benefit humanity is only a part of the work of our mission. Advanced AI models will also present new challenges that are already surfacing, and we need to be prepared to identify these challenges and develop solutions to address them.

These are the two dimensions of what we’re building the Foundation to do. We aim to enable the use of AI to find solutions to humanity’s hardest problems, transform what people are capable of, and deliver real benefits in people’s lives—while working hard with partners to be ready for new challenges, and to help make society resilient, as AI advances.

This work is just beginning. Over the next year, as we quickly ramp up, the Foundation expects to invest at least $1 billion across life sciences and curing diseases, jobs and economic impact, AI resilience, and community programs. This includes early investments toward our previously announced $25 billion commitment to curing diseases and AI resilience.

The OpenAI Foundation is building out its life sciences program to help accelerate progress on curing diseases and improving human health. The program’s initial focus areas include AI for Alzheimer’s, Public Data for Health, and High-Burden Diseases.

We are looking for a Program Director, High-Burden Diseases to help build this work from the ground up. We define High-Burden Diseases as those that lead to over 500,000 deaths and/or 25 million DALYs annually and also face market failures that result in under investment in R&D. These may include diseases like tuberculosis, newborn mortality, stroke, and Hepatitis

B. We invest in the application of AI and data to accelerate and unlock R&D progress to prevent and treat these diseases in a global context. This is a founding role within the Foundation’s Life Sciences and Curing Diseases program. This is a generalist role and you will work across multiple focus areas, helping shape strategy, source and evaluate opportunities, engage with external organizations, and support the deployment of significant resources over time.

This role is designed for someone with the flexibility and judgment to operate across a broad range of scientific, strategic, and grantmaking questions.

Over time, you may continue to operate as a cross-cutting generalist across the High-Burden Diseases portfolio, or may grow to focus more on a particular area within the portfolio as it expands.

This role requires someone who is highly flexible, thoughtful, strategic, and action-oriented—comfortable moving between topics and projects, engaging deeply with external experts and organizations, and translating a broad mission into strong recommendations and concrete action.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA (strongly preferred). We currently use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week. Some travel to conferences around the U.S. and sometimes other countries is also required.

• Work closely with the Head of High-Burden Diseases and other team members to support strategy, grantmaking execution, and ongoing management across the portfolio
• Help source, evaluate, and recommend grants and other funding opportunities across multiple domains within the High-Burden Diseases program
• Help research new disease or technology areas and determine where the Foundation should focus and develop investment…