Events Program Leads – Special Events and Virtual Programs

About this role

We're hiring two program leads into our Events team: a Special Events Lead and a Virtual Events Lead.

Since the underlying skill set is similar across both roles, we encourage you to indicate interest in either or both. We'll evaluate you across your preferred roles, and will finalize placement later in the round.

ABOUT CEA

The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) stewards the movement of people putting effective altruism principles into practice to solve the world's most pressing problems. We're working to build a flourishing future by applying evidence, reason, and compassion to challenges like global poverty, animal suffering, and existential risks.

Our work centers on growing and supporting a global community of people who rigorously analyze where they can do the most good and take action on those insights. Current strategic priorities include increasing understanding of effective altruism and its principles, growing the number of people who are motivated by EA principles to take significant action to address pressing problems, and diversifying funding sources for high-impact work.

We had significant success in 2025, building momentum within CEA. Our headcount grew from 42 to 66 core staff. Program participation (e.g., events, courses, groups) grew https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NKrpEdg7wAgcoHNRG/cea-is-growing-again-25-more-people-engaged-with-our-1 by 20-25% year over year. We merged https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BLvTcMMEQGFYsh6Jw/ea-funds-and-cea-are-merging with EA Funds https://funds.effectivealtruism.org/ and are rapidly scaling up our capacity for grantmaking and associated fundraising

In 2026, we've maintained ambitious momentum https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Dy4iGHbAkKAQ4t2Dw/building-sustainable-momentum-progress-report-on-cea-s-2025 while building the foundations for a step-change in the wider EA ecosystem's growth trajectory from 2027 onwards.

ABOUT THE TEAM

The Events Team runs CEA's convening portfolio. EA Global is our flagship conference series, bringing more than 4,000 attendees to San Francisco, London, and New York each year. EAGx events are community-organized conferences that CEA funds and supports, with 10 EAGx events and at least 23 EA Summits running across more than 26 countries in 2026. Both the Special Events and Virtual Events roles sit alongside these programs and will build out new parts of the portfolio.

Special Events is a new CEA team that uses small, carefully designed events to bring the right people together around what matters most for EA’s impact right now. Where EA Global connects thousands, Special Events convenes 20 to 60 people with a specific goal in mind. That might be senior leaders coordinating on strategy, parts of the ecosystem that would benefit from comparing notes, donors deepening their engagement with EA Funds, or journalists and others who shape how EA is understood building relationships with the community. Some of these events will directly advance CEA’s own priorities. Others will be community-wide convenings that no single organisation is positioned to run. The Meta Coordination Forum is the best-known example of this work so far, bringing together leaders in the EA community to coordinate on key issues. The team has a deliberately broad remit. Rather than running a fixed calendar, it will identify where the right room could make the biggest difference and take an opinionated view on what each event should achieve.

Virtual Programs builds on our strong track record with virtual events, including EAGxVirtual and EA Connect 2025, which reached over 2,600 attendees and was our largest event to date. Virtual events are far more accessible to attendees, much cheaper to run, and can be planned on much shorter timelines than in-person conferences. We think a significantly larger virtual portfolio could be one of the most important levers we have for growing the EA movement – both by offering high-absorbency introductory experiences for people newly interested in EA, and by providing low-cost ways to keep the community connected and coordinated as it grows.

SPECIAL EVENTS LEAD

The Special Events Lead designs and produces small, high-stakes convenings for the people shaping effective altruism. These events are largely one-shot: unlike a conference series that iterates several times a year, you often only get one attempt to get a convening right. You'll also be CEA's face to the people you invite – many are senior figures in the EA community, and a call with you is often their first impression of the event. Work might include:

- Using your knowledge of the EA community to identify where a new event would add value, and proposing it

- Setting the goals for each convening, building the attendee list and the selection criteria behind it, and shaping content, sessions, and facilitation

- Serving as the main point of contact for attendees and partner organizations, securing participation from people with limited availability, and navigating sensitive interpersonal and organizational dynamics

- Owning logistics end-to-end – venue selection, vendor negotiation, travel, accommodation, catering, AV, budgets, and onsite run-of-show

- Setting up follow-up processes that capture what came out of each event, and contributing to funding proposals and impact reporting

VIRTUAL PROGRAM LEAD

The Virtual Program Lead owns CEA's virtual events portfolio. This means treating virtual events as products to be designed, tested, and iterated, rather than as online versions of our in-person formats. In contrast to Special Events, this role is about running many events, learning quickly, and scaling what works. Work might include:

- Developing and owning a view on which virtual products we should run, who they serve, and how they fit alongside EAG, EAGx, and Summits

- Translating high-level aims (e.g., "give newcomers a compelling first experience of the EA community") into concrete event…