Chief of Staff, Life Sciences and Curing Diseases

Chief of Staff, Life Sciences and Curing Diseases

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 and Curing Diseases 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 Accelerating Progress on High-Mortality and High-Burden Diseases.

We are looking for a Chief of Staff to partner directly with the Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases. This is a high-leverage role at the center of one of the Foundation’s most important programs. You will help translate strategy into execution, ensure the program operates effectively as it scales, and act as a force multiplier across people, projects, and priorities.

This is not a traditional program management role. You will operate as an extension of the program lead—owning critical work streams, driving clarity in ambiguous situations, and helping build the systems and team needed to deploy significant capital into real-world scientific and health impact.

• Drive execution across the Life Sciences and Curing Diseases portfolio
• Translate high-level strategy into concrete priorities, roadmaps, and operating plans
• Track progress across multiple focus areas, ensuring work is advancing with urgency and clarity
• Identify bottlenecks and intervene directly to unblock critical initiatives
• Act as a force multiplier for the Head of Life Sciences and Curing Diseases
• Partner closely on decision-making, prioritization, and external engagements
• Prepare materials, synthesize inputs, and ensure high-quality outputs across key initiatives
• Step in to represent the program lead in internal and external settings when needed
• Build and run the operating system for the program
• Establish processes for planning, resource allocation, and execution across a rapidly growing portfolio
• Create visibility across work streams, ensuring leadership has a clear view of what is happening and what matters
• Implement lightweight but effective systems that scale with the program
• Own critical cross-functional initiatives
• Lead special projects that cut across focus areas, including launching new initiatives, standing up new grantmaking efforts, and building partnerships
• Coordinate with finance, legal, communications, operations, and external partners to move complex efforts forward
• Help design and operationalize new focus areas before dedicated leads are in place
• Support hiring and team buildout
• Help identify talent gaps and drive recruiting for key roles across the life sciences portfolio
• Act as a cultural anchor for a high-performance, mission-driven team
• Onboard new team members and ensure they are set up to succeed quickly

• Have 5–12+ years of experience in roles like program…