Program Manager / Director, Fellowship

Date Posted	October 16, 2025
Industry	Nonprofit
Specialty	Not Specified
Remote / Telecommute	Hybrid
Job Status	Full-time
Salary	$90,000 - $160,000 in the US ; £60,000 - £90,000 in the UK

Description:

Program Manager / Program Director, Fellowship

Job Description

AI is advancing rapidly, and the next few years will be critical. We're hiring a Program Manager or Program Director to lead our flagship fellowship program — building the community of expert journalists who will hold frontier AI companies accountable, investigate emerging risks, and shape how the world understands transformative AI.

You'll scale our fellowship from 15 to 30+ placements annually at outlets like Bloomberg, The Guardian, and MIT Technology Review. You'll recruit exceptional talent, design world-class training, and build the systems and team needed to execute flawlessly as we 10x our impact by 2030.

About the Tarbell Center

The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism supports journalism that helps society navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI. We provide funding, training, and a professional network to strengthen AI reporting at major news outlets.

Our programs include:

• Tarbell Fellowship: A 12-month program providing early-career journalists with AI training, competitive stipends, and a 9-month placement at a major newsroom (e.g. The Guardian, Bloomberg, MIT Tech Review, Time, and more).

• Tarbell Grants – Awards of $1,000–$15,000 to support original AI reporting. So far we’ve distributed >$200k in grants supporting freelance journalists, staff reporters, and small teams at newsrooms and we plan to distribute >$500k in 2026.

• Residencies – Provides senior writers with the time and resources to produce in-depth AI reporting. In 2025, we’re supporting Yi-Ling Liu (former China Editor at Rest of World) and we’ve previously supported journalists with experience at the New York Times and The Economist.

• Transformer – Our in-house publication which covers the power and politics of transformative AI.

Since launching in 2022, Tarbell has grown rapidly — supporting 50+ journalists through our fellowship, grants, and residencies. By 2030, we aim to support 10,000 high-quality stories on AI and ensure that reporting about AI is treated with the urgency of other transformational topics such as climate change.

About the role

As Program Manager / Program Director, you‘ll lead the team behind our Tarbell Fellowship, own its strategic direction, and ensure operational excellence across the program. Your mission will be to scale our impact from supporting 15 fellows annually to 30+ by 2027, while maintaining the exceptionally high bar that has made the fellowship one of the most competitive and prestigious journalism programs in the world.

This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution. You'll develop ambitious plans for expanding AI journalism coverage in priority areas (from investigations of frontier AI companies to detailed policy explainers), then build the systems and team to execute flawlessly on these plans.

We expect Program Managers to bring 3-4 years of relevant management experience to the role, and Program Directors to bring 5+ years. Strong performers will have significant autonomy to shape how we achieve our mission and the strategic direction of the Tarbell Center over the coming years.

Core responsibilities include:

• Program strategy, management, and leadership (40%)

• Lead on the development of our fellowship strategy, working closely with our Executive Director to identify critical gaps in AI journalism coverage and designing fellowship initiatives to address them.

• Build and manage a growing team including hiring, management, and culture-building. You’ll start with 2 direct reports, with the potential to grow to 5+ by 2027.

• Create scalable systems for recruitment, training, placement, and ongoing fellow support to ensure the fellowship can scale smoothly.

• [Director] Make high-stakes decisions about program direction, resource allocation, and strategic priorities.
  
  

• Fellow recruitment and selection (30%)

• Design and execute recruitment strategies to attract 2,000+ applications from top emerging journalists and AI talent globally each year. The top 0.1% of potential candidates should end up in our program — you'll ensure this happens.

• Lead a rigorous multi-stage vetting process: reviewing applications, evaluating writing samples, conducting interviews and matching top candidates with host newsrooms.

• Responsible for selecting our final cohort, ensuring we maintain an exceptional quality bar.
  
  

• Training program design and delivery (30%)

• Oversee our 10-week AI Journalism Fundamentals course and week-long Bay Area Summit, working with senior journalists and AI experts to deliver world-class education.

• Contract with and manage external experts. Past contributors include senior reporters and editors from the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Time, and many more.

• Continuously improve our journalism and AI curricula based on fellow feedback and the evolving AI landscape, ensuring that our training program remains a world-class learning experience.

There is substantial room for growth in this position. Strong performers will have the opportunity to expand their scope, take on more strategic responsibilities, and grow into increasingly senior leadership roles as Tarbell scales significantly over the coming years.

Who might be a good fit

We expect the strongest candidates to have:

• Demonstrated experience working independently. You tackle large, ambiguous projects and drive them to completion, even when that means doing difficult or unusual work yourself. 

• A strong understanding of advanced AI, or the ability to learn this quickly. You understand basic concepts in machine learning (e.g. transformers, gradient descent), can explain various governance topics (e.g. responsible scaling policies, compute governance, capabilities evaluations), and are deeply familiar with the key players & factions in the AI landscape.

• Track record of excellence: You've previously achieved outstanding results relative to your peer group. You’ve likely worked at a high-performing startup (as founder or early employee), a prestigious organization with world-class standards (e.g., Alphabet, Gates Foundation), a top newsroom (e.g., Bloomberg, Financial Times, NYT), or a leading AI safety institution (e.g., UK AISI, 80,000 Hours). For the Director position, we're seeking 5+ years of leadership experience in such organizations.

• Exceptional project management skills. You create robust tracking systems, maintain high standards under pressure, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. You’ve likely managed projects with budgets >$500k, timelines of 6+ months, and 5+ major stakeholders.

• Strong people skills and leadership capacity. You have good judgment about people, can have difficult conversations constructively, and know how to build and manage high-performing teams. For the Director position, we require past experience managing direct reports.

• Clear, compelling communication. Your writing is concise and persuasive. You can explain complex ideas to diverse audiences and represent the organization professionally in high-stakes situations with newsrooms.

• Passion for Tarbell’s mission of supporting journalism that helps society navigate the development and deployment of increasingly advanced AI.

The ideal candidate will possess many of these qualities but not necessarily all. If you're on the fence about applying because you're unsure whether you're qualified, we strongly encourage you to apply. 

Location

We strongly prefer candidates based in London or the San Francisco Bay Area, or those willing to relocate. In London you’ll work 2 days per week from our office space in Shoreditch. We expect to establish an office space in San Francisco in 2026 with a 2 day per week in–person requirement for staff.

We're also open to candidates in New York or Washington DC. In exceptional circumstances, we may consider remote candidates in other locations. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to sponsor US or UK work visas for this role.

All staff spend 1 week per quarter on site (typically London or San Francisco). Additionally, occasional travel may be required (approximately 1 week per quarter).

Benefits

Our benefits include:

• 33 days of paid holiday in total (including national holidays)

• $4,500 annual budget for equipment and office space.

• $2,000-$5,000 annual budget for personal development and productivity.

• Standard pension/401(k), with 5% contribution from employer. 

• [US] Platinum health, dental, and vision plans, with 95% of premiums paid for by Tarbell

• Flexible work schedule & location (when and where you work is mostly up to you). 

• A supportive work environment to grow and do your best work

Operating Values

• Focus is good: Do fewer things. When it matters, do them to a world-class standard.

• Hire the best, then invest: We hire people in the top 10% and then help them get to the top 1%.

• Freedom & responsibility: We trust people to own their work and outcomes, pairing autonomy with accountability.

• Radical candour: We provide direct feedback that is kind and clear, honest and sincere (even when it’s difficult).

• Safe to speak, safe to fail: We create an environment where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and make mistakes without fear of blame. Feedback is about learning, not punishment

• Truthful & transparent: We believe in being truthful & transparent, even when it's difficult or disadvantageous to do so.

Application process

• Round 1: Apply by 2 November 11:59pm, Anywhere on Earth

• Round 2: We’ll then invite candidates to complete:

• A 3-5 hour work task. We will compensate candidates $60 / hour for time spent on work tasks.

• A 30-60 minute interview

• Round 3: A 2 day work trial with our team in December (in-person in London strongly preferred). We offer a $1,000 total stipend for the two-day trial, plus reimbursement of travel and accommodation costs.

Tarbell is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. The emergence of increasingly advanced AI poses a risk to everyone. Grappling with this technology will require the participation of all of society and is undermined by discriminatory hiring practices which pit factions of humanity against one another.

We do not discriminate against qualified employees or applicants based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, sexual preference, marital status, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal or state law or local ordinance.

Apply

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