Associate Director, AI Transformation

Overview

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.

CHAI was founded in 2002 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with the goal of dramatically reducing the price of life-saving drugs and increasing access to these medicines in the countries with the highest burden of the disease. Over the following two decades, CHAI has expanded its focus. Today, along with HIV, we work with our partners to prevent and treat infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Our work has also expanded into cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases, and we work to accelerate the rollout of lifesaving vaccines, reduce maternal and child mortality, combat chronic malnutrition, and increase access to assistive technology. We are investing in horizontal approaches to strengthen health systems through programs in human resources for health, digital health, and health financing. With each new and innovative program, our strategy is grounded in maximizing sustainable impact at scale, ensuring that governments lead the solutions, that programs are designed to scale nationally, and learnings are shared globally.

At CHAI, our people are our greatest asset, and none of this work would be possible without their talent, time, dedication, and passion for our mission and values. We are a highly diverse team of enthusiastic individuals across 40 countries with a broad range of skill sets and life experiences. CHAI is deeply grounded in the countries we work in, with the majority of our staff based in program countries. Learn more about our exciting work: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

CHAI is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and is committed to providing an environment of fairness, and mutual respect where all applicants have access to equal employment opportunities. CHAI values diversity and inclusion, and recognizes that our mission is best advanced by the leadership and contributions of people with diverse experience, backgrounds, and culture.

Position Overview

CHAI is building a team within its Global Operations function to drive the organization’s internal AI transformation. The Associate Director, AI Transformation, will lead that team. This is a role for someone who is both a genuine builder and a credible enterprise leader – a person who can design and ship AI-powered tools themselves. They should also be able to drive organization-wide adoption of AI across a complex, distributed, mission-driven organization.

Reporting to the Director, Operations and managing one direct report (with scope for the team to grow in the future), the Associate Director provides both the strategic direction and the day-to-day management of CHAI’s internal AI capability. This includes setting the internal AI strategy, leading organization-wide adoption efforts, and overseeing the development and deployment of bespoke AI tools created for general management and operational use across the organization. The internal AI team is expected to work closely with the Innovation team, which has a complementary scope focused on AI use in CHAI’s technical and programmatic work in global health. The role also requires close coordination with CHAI’s IT team on systems' integration, and with CHAI’s AI Advisory Committee to ensure strong governance.

The right candidate brings demonstrable building experience – they can code, they can ship, and they know modern AI development tools firsthand – alongside the organizational range to drive change across senior stakeholders, functional leaders, and country teams. This is not a role for a pure strategist, and it is not a role for a pure engineer. It is for a leader who is genuinely both, and who wants to put that combination to work in service of a global health mission.

This role can be offered at either the Associate Director or Director level, commensurate with the qualifications and experience of the candidate. The base location is flexible; candidates can be based in any of the geographies that CHAI operates in, subject to work authorization and necessary approvals.

What Success Looks Like

The following give a concrete sense of the kinds of outcomes we are looking for; they should be viewed as illustrative, and not comprehensive:

Responsibilities

• Define and drive CHAI’s internal AI transformation strategy, identifying where AI can most effectively transform enterprise operations, internal workflows, and staff productivity across CHAI’s global teams.
• Design, build, and ship bespoke AI-powered tools alongside the Manager, AI Transformation, working directly in code and AI-native development environments (e.g., Claude Code and Cowork) on the most important builds; set the technical bar for what the team produces.
• Co-own CHAI's AI tool portfolio alongside the Innovation team, overseeing the evaluation, selection, procurement, and ongoing governance of AI platforms and tools used across the organization; establish practical AI governance frameworks that protect CHAI without slowing it down.
• Drive organization-wide AI adoption of internal AI tools across CHAI’s global offices, including approaches that reach staff with varying levels of technical knowledge across diverse geographies and functions; establish metrics to track adoption, engagement, and return on investment.
• Manage and mentor the Manager, AI Transformation, providing clear technical and professional direction and investing meaningfully in their growth.
• Engage senior stakeholders across CHAI – functional leaders, country directors, the C-suite – to build support for the internal AI agenda and translate it into concrete organizational action.
• Stay current with the rapidly evolving AI development landscape by evaluating new tools, frameworks, and approaches and bringing the best of them into the team’s practice; undertake other responsibilities as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent and at least 10 years of relevant professional experience, including direct experience leading AI, digital transformation, or technology adoption initiatives at scale in complex organizations.
• Demonstrated hands-on building experience – you have personally designed, built, and shipped AI or software tools that others use. This is not a role where technical credibility can come from oversight alone.
• Practical fluency with software engineering tools and practices – version control (e.g., GitHub), automated testing, and code review. Hands-on experience with LLM APIs, AI development frameworks, and AI-native development environments (e.g., Claude Code and Cowork). Programming language proficiency (e.g., Python) is helpful, but not required.
• Deep, practical familiarity with modern AI tools – particularly large language models, RAG, and memory management – and a sophisticated understanding of their capabilities, limitations, and appropriate enterprise use cases.
• Experience managing and developing technical staff, with the ability to set a high technical bar and support professional growth.
• Strong judgment under ambiguity, and a track record of making things happen in environments with limited structure or precedent.
• Genuine commitment to CHAI’s mission and the operating realities of a global health organization working in resource-constrained, cross-cultural contexts.

Advantages

• Background in AI engineering, data science, or a related technical discipline.
• Familiarity with AI governance frameworks, data privacy, and responsible AI principles in complex operating environments.
• Experience in global health, international development, or a comparable mission-driven sector.
• Exposure to health data, health systems, or public health contexts.

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