Senior Director of Weather Forecast

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Job Summary

The Development Innovation Lab is seeking a full-time Senior Director to lead the UChicago Human-Centered Forecasts initiative. The Senior Director will work closely with the faculty leads to build and grow this new initiative that has the potential to transform access to a vital climate adaptation tool in low- and middle-income countries.

The Senior Director will be administratively based at DIL at the University of Chicago.

Responsibilities

• Spearhead efforts to secure $20-$50 million in funding to establish a long-term program that will influence global weather forecasting practice and scale access to high-quality weather forecasts to millions of people in low- and middle-income countries.
• Build and oversee a growing organization. This entails developing and executing a strategic plan, overseeing overall management across workstreams led by faculty leads; technical project management; reporting; and managing related teams. The Senior Director may also be responsible for the management of the budget.
• Lead conversations and negotiations with stakeholders to plan, design, and execute collaborations. Establish strong working relationships with and represent the initiative in meetings with high-level policymakers, funders, nonprofit leaders, and business executives on the global stage.
• Perform other related work as needed to support the success of the initiative.

Required Qualifications

• Masters’ degree in sustainable development, climate science, agrometeorology, economics, public policy, or related field
• Knowledge and skills developed through 10+ years of work experience in a related field.
• Proven track record of working with multiple stakeholders, particularly senior counterparts at governments in low- and middle-income countries, multilaterals, and large international organizations, to build successful policies and processes.
• Familiarity with weather forecasting techniques and/or agrometeorology, enabling the candidate to engage meaningfully with scientific experts as well as communicate technical concepts to non-specialist audiences.
• Demonstrated leadership and management skills, including working across teams and efficiently managing the time of senior principals.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English.

Preferred Qualifications

We encourage you to apply if you believe you have the skills to make a meaningful contribution to our work, even if you don’t meet every qualification listed below

• 15+ years of relevant work experience
• PhD degree in sustainable development, climate science, agrometeorology, economics, public policy, or related field
• Prior experience supervising teams working in higher education, international organizations or similar
• Track record engaging with senior counterparts in foundations and the private sector
• Experience leading grant proposals or otherwise raising resources. Significant fundraising experience, with a history of securing substantial funding for large-scale programs, would be ideal.
• Familiarity with development economics, particularly causal research, enabling the candidate to engage deeply on work to optimize the dissemination of weather forecasts.
• Familiarity with the latest developments using AI techniques in climate science or meteorology

Working Conditions

• Candidates must be willing to travel extensively and flexibly as needed (around 50%), including international travel. Candidates must be eager to travel to meet with potential donors, governments, and other partners and must be willing to flexibly adjust travel and work schedules to meet the project needs.

Application Documents (Required)

• Resume/CV
• Cover Letter
• References Contact Information (3)
• Work sample (required)

About the Initiative

The Human-Centered Weather Forecasts initiative is a new interdisciplinary UChicago initiative that aims to transform access to high-quality weather forecasts in low- and middle-income countries, e.g., by leveraging advances in AI. It is co-led by Amir Jina (Harris School of Public Policy), Michael Kremer (Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics and Harris School of Public Policy), and Pedram Hassanzadeh (Department of Geophysical Sciences and Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics), and works closely with the UChicago Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth and its faculty director Michael Greenstone.

High-quality weather forecasts help vulnerable populations adapt to increased weather uncertainty and extremes. Innovations, especially in AI, are driving a second revolution in weather forecasting. However, the benefits are yet to be realized in low- and middle-income countries. This initiative aims to bridge this gap, and will cover the following workstreams:

1. Produce AI-based forecasts tailored to the specific adaptation needs of farmers and individuals exposed to extreme heat
2. Work with implementers to disseminate forecasts to 100 million people in low- and middle-income countries
3. Conduct rigorous testing (such as A/B tests) to optimize dissemination and generate lessons to further scale these advances
4. Strengthen global forecasting systems, including through benchmarking and validation

The Human-Centered Weather Forecasts initiative will build on the progress made by the Innovation Commission for Climate Change, Food Security, and Agriculture (whose Secretariat is based at UChicago). For example, in 2024, the Commission collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare in India to disseminate high-quality weather forecasts to 9 million farmers under an existing Memorandum of Understanding; plans are now underway to expand to scale nationally in 2025. The Commission also planned AIM for Scale, a recently announced $26 million joint initiative led by the UAE and the Gates Foundation, which will focus on mobilizing efforts to disseminate high-quality weather forecasts in low- and middle-income countries in 2024 and 2025.

The Human-Centered Weather Forecasts initiative will also build on the progress made by the AI for Climate (AICE) Initiative at UChicago. For example, AICE has developed a partnership with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence to design a training curriculum for government officials to learn about state-of-the-art AI forecasting methods, and conduct research to advance these methods for forecasts in low- and middle-income countries.