Program Director, Fellowship

Core responsibilities:

• Program strategy and leadership: Own the fellowship end-to-end, setting vision, defining annual goals, and making key decisions that determine program success.
• People management: Build and lead a growing team, starting with 2 direct reports, potentially growing to 5+ over time, including hiring, coaching, and development.
• Fellow recruitment and selection: Design recruitment strategies to attract 2,000+ applications annually, lead multi-stage vetting process, and make final selection decisions.
• Training and curriculum: Oversee 10-week AI Journalism Fundamentals course and week-long Bay Area Summit, shaping curriculum and recruiting expert speakers.
• Systems and operations: Build scalable systems for recruitment, training, placement, and ongoing fellow support to enable growth from 15 to 30+ fellows.

This role creates positive change by building a global network of AI reporters with the knowledge and resources required to cover AI during a transformative period, supporting journalism that helps society navigate the development and deployment of advanced AI.

Required skills and experience:

• Deep expertise in either journalism OR artificial intelligence (need one, not both). Journalism profile requires substantial experience in professional journalism, understanding of newsroom operations, and ability to evaluate journalistic quality. AI profile requires strong understanding of AI concepts and governance.
• Leadership experience: 5+ years managing high-performing teams with good judgment about people and ability to lead through organizational change.
• Exceptional project management skills: Ability to build systems that scale, maintain standards under pressure, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
• Demonstrated interest and potential in the other domain (AI experts should understand journalism; journalists should engage with technical AI developments).

Compensation: $115,000 - $160,000+ in the US; £75,000 - £90,000+ in the UK. Strong performers will have a clear path to Chief Programs Officer within 18–24 months, overseeing all talent programs with a combined budget of $8M+.

Tarbell supports journalism that helps society navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI.