Senior Communications Officer - Media & Public Affairs

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We’re hiring a Senior Communications Officer, Media & Public Affairs to lead how GiveWell’s work is represented in the media and in public conversations. You will set our strategy, build trusted relationships with journalists and other influential voices, pursue opportunities that increase understanding of GiveWell’s work, and lead our external response in fast-moving situations.

This role will lead a small and growing team. This is one of three new communications leadership roles, alongside a Senior Communications Officer, Strategic Communications and a Senior Communications Officer, Editorial & Production. 

About the role

Both our research and impact are expanding. Last year, we directed more than $400 million to highly cost-effective programs that save and improve lives. This year, we expect our grantmaking to approach, and possibly exceed, $1 billion.

To build toward the communications capacity this next stage requires, we are rapidly expanding our team. The three Senior Communications Officers will work together on many projects to support GiveWell’s communications needs, while working closely with other leaders across our organization. Each leader will own their function, but much of the work that matters most—like team strategies, major initiatives, partnership campaigns, and how we present the organization as a whole—will involve all three. We will expect this group to set shared priorities and work closely together to achieve the team’s goals.

In this hands-on leadership position, you’ll own how and where GiveWell engages in media and public conversations, with end-to-end responsibility for this emerging function. You’ll set its strategy, hire and develop its people, build its systems, and personally own its hardest and most consequential work. This is an opportunity to build, not just inherit, an important function at a critical point in GiveWell’s development. You’ll start with a small team and grow it over time.

While this role is set at the Senior Communications Officer level, we may consider hiring an exceptional candidate as a Communications Director—with greater expectations, responsibilities, and compensation.

What You'll Do

As Senior Communications Officer, Media & Public Affairs, you will combine long-term strategy and relationship-building with the ability to respond quickly and exercise sound judgment in sensitive or fast-moving situations.

Specific duties will include:

• Set GiveWell’s strategy across media, thought-leader engagement, online communities, public forums and events, and other earned communications opportunities—including deciding where and when GiveWell should participate and overseeing those engagements.
• Build and maintain high-trust relationships with journalists, editors, podcast hosts, event organizers, thought leaders, subject-matter experts, and other influential external stakeholders.
• Identify, develop, and pitch substantive stories, event opportunities, and thought-leadership ideas that extend understanding of GiveWell’s work.
• Own inbound media engagement, including situations that require rapid responses, close coordination with subject-matter experts, and careful judgment about what GiveWell can responsibly say—and about which responses need escalation.
• Build and maintain GiveWell’s readiness for sensitive or fast-moving situations, monitor emerging issues in media and public conversations, and lead our external response when needed in partnership with others.
• Advise GiveWell’s leadership on external opportunities and relationships, and prepare senior leaders and subject-matter experts for interviews, speaking engagements, and other public appearances.
• Exercise sound judgment about when and how GiveWell should enter public conversations, including evaluating likely value, reputational considerations, and communications risks.
• Evaluate and help shape public-facing communications partnerships, advising on which opportunities GiveWell should pursue and how we should participate.
• Serve as a spokesperson for GiveWell in select media interviews, events, and other public forums, communicating our perspective clearly, accurately, and with sound judgment.
• Work with grantees and other partners on press releases and other media-facing communications involving GiveWell or our shared work.
• Manage and develop one or two team members initially, and build the relationships, systems, and additional capacity the function will need over time.

About You

You are skilled at using communications to help people understand complex ideas, build trust, and take action. You are comfortable being accountable for outcomes, making consequential decisions with limited oversight, and knowing which decisions genuinely require escalation.

You are energized by intellectually demanding work, and the challenges of creating engaging communications within a careful and precise style. You can engage deeply with GiveWell’s research, and you are comfortable understanding and communicating about data in detail. You have a long track record of getting up to speed quickly on complex subject matter and carefully communicating to a very high standard. You can build a compelling narrative that is entirely factual, representing what is known and unknown without overstating or hedging into vagueness—and you find the idea of working with GiveWell’s exacting communications standards exciting rather than limiting.

Your background includes significant experience leading communications in complex, high-stakes environments. This should include 10+ years of experience in media relations, thought leadership, and public engagement. You have deep experience owning that work end to end, not just contributing to it. You’ve remained a hands-on leader who enjoys the work itself, as well as the strategy and systems behind it.

You know how journalists, influential voices, events, and other public forums shape how organizations and ideas are understood. You have a demonstrated ability to build meaningful external relationships, identify opportunities worth pursuing, personally represent an organization’s perspective, and navigate public-facing situations in which context is limited, timelines are short, and judgment matters. Much of this should be work you executed yourself, in addition to work you directed. Experience in settings where precision and credibility were at least as important as reach is a strong signal of fit.

In addition to demonstrated expertise in the duties listed above, you should have:

• Exceptional communications judgment, including the ability to understand audience, context, risk, timing, and the underlying substance of a message.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to quickly make complex ideas clear and compelling without sacrificing rigor or nuance.
• A track record of building and leading: you have created or substantially rebuilt a team or function—not only run ones you inherited—and you have hired, developed, and managed people.
• Recent, hands-on excellence at your craft: you can point to work from the past few years that you personally produced or substantially shaped.
• Experience producing communications that are direct and factual while being engaging and effective with their target audiences—work that succeeds through substance and clarity rather than embellishment.
• Intellectual curiosity and the ability to engage deeply with GiveWell’s research and ideas, even without prior experience in our giving areas.
• Experience advising executives or other senior decision-makers directly.
• Strong alignment with GiveWell’s mission and values, including truth-seeking, transparency, and a commitment to communicating accurately and thoughtfully.

We also think these qualities will help you do well in the role and at GiveWell: 

• People who can develop a strong point of view and hold it with confidence, but remain genuinely open to challenge, new information, and better ideas.
• Self-starters who take ownership, are comfortable creating structure in an evolving environment, and can make thoughtful decisions without always having complete information.
• People who are proactive and anticipatory, who identify opportunities, risks, bottlenecks, and communications needs before they become obvious.
• Collaborative leaders who raise the quality of the work around them and build strong relationships across teams.
• People who coordinate well with peers, resolve dependencies and disagreements, and make shared work clearer rather than more complicated.

Key Questions & Information

What are some of the reasons I might not like this role?

• You want to step into a mature function with established systems, rather than build one while you run it.
• You do best with clear direction and established priorities. We’ll expect you to set most of your own, make most decisions yourself, and reach substantial autonomy within your first six months.
• You prefer advising on communications to producing and being accountable for them.
• You want sole ownership of an organization’s overarching communications strategy and brand. At GiveWell, the CEO and executive team owns that direction; you would help shape it and lead your function within it.
• You want to lead a large team from day one. This team is small today, and much of the most difficult work will be yours to do directly.
• You find standards of precision and understatement limiting and frustrating. We work extremely hard to only communicate accurately what we know and what we don’t.

Can I apply to more than one of the Senior Communications Officer roles?

You can, but most people shouldn’t. We’re looking for deep expertise in these areas, and we expect most candidates with required expertise will be a clear fit for a single role. If you’re one of the few with real depth in more than one area, apply to both and tell us why. Otherwise, apply for the role you are most qualified for, and we’ll let you know if we think another role might suit you better.

What does this interview process entail?

We’ll use a combination of interviews, written exercises, and work trials to assess the qualities described above. We’ll share more specific details if we invite you to move forward to any of the following stages, but our current plan will likely include the following:

• Application
• Interview with a member of the Talent Acquisition Team
• Compensated work trial with a set maximum number of hours
• Interview with GiveWell's Chief of Staff to the CEO
• Values interview
• CEO interview and References

Note that you don’t need to submit a cover letter. We rely heavily on your resume and answers to the application questions below when we’re making early decisions. We encourage you to spend time responding to the application questions thoroughly and carefully.

Details

• Team: You’ll report to our Head of Communications, and collaborate closely with the two other Senior Communications Officers. You will lead a small team that you’ll develop over time.
• Compensation: This role is set at the Senior Communications Officer level. For an exceptional candidate, we may consider hiring at the Communications Director level—with greater expectations, responsibilities, and compensation.
  • NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $250,000
  • All other U.S. locations: $225,000
• Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely within the U.S. and abroad. This position is eligible to work fully remotely.
• Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California; Brooklyn, NYC; or London, UK. Please note that office space is limited, and is not guaranteed.
• International work: For this role, we are able to employ candidates based in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada. A successful candidate will need to commit to a work schedule that has some overlap with American working hours and the schedules of key coworkers.
• Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.
• Visa Sponsorship: We are not currently able to sponsor visas for this role.
• Benefits: A few highlights of our benefits offerings:
  • Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
  • Four weeks of paid time off per year plus an annual summer break
  • 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave
  • Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
  • Automatic contribution equal to 5% of your gross salary into your 403(b) retirement plan (for U.S. based staff)
  • Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we’ll offer flexibility for candidates whose personal or professional circumstances require them to moderately delay their start date.