Executive Director

About Upturn

Upturn challenges the material harms of AI, algorithms, and data on people’s lives.

Today, corporations use AI systems to exploit working people, extract resources, and consolidate wealth and power. Governments also use these technologies to expand the carceral system, enforce austerity, and violate people’s rights. Put together, these uses of technology have led to an acceleration of economic, racial, and social injustice.

Our research and advocacy interrogates oppressive uses of technology through a historical and political lens. In particular, we focus on the real-world consequences of AI systems on housing, labor, healthcare, financial security, and other important aspects of people’s lives.

We partner with local and national advocates, organizers, litigators, academics, and policymakers to address these immediate harms, while supporting movements building toward a just economic system that meets people’s needs.

Some of our recent work includes:

• Critiquing the claim that portable tenant screening reports are a meaningful way to mitigate the burden of rental housing application fees.
• Partnering with legal services attorneys to fight systems that cut people’s government benefits.
• Documenting the dangerous expansion of US law enforcement’s use of forensic tools to search people’s mobile phones.
• Developing regulatory proposals to rein in workplace technologies, together with workers’ rights advocates.
• Urging the Biden-Harris administration to address algorithmic discrimination through executive and agency actions.
• Advocating for civil rights law to recognize a duty to search for and implement less discriminatory algorithms.

Upturn is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC. Its co-founder and longtime Executive Director, Harlan Yu, recently announced his plans to depart Upturn in June 2026. Read more here.

Learn more about our work at https://www.upturn.org.

About the Position

The Executive Director is responsible for developing Upturn as an institution, leading a strong and effective organization, and building its long-term success.

The Executive Director’s responsibilities include:

• Guiding long-term organizational vision and strategies
  • Developing and continually refining a principled and grounded approach to mission advancement.
  • Supporting strategic goals led by Upturn’s programmatic teams.
  • Ensuring internal alignment through team retreats, strategic planning, and other activities.
  • Building external partnerships that help shape the broader advocacy ecosystem in which Upturn operates.
• Ensuring the overall financial and legal stability of the organization
  • Developing and delivering on a long-term organizational fundraising strategy.
  • Working with operations and accounting on financial planning, internal resource allocation, and assessment of financial risks.
  • Working with external counsel to assess organizational legal risks compliance.
• Working collaboratively with staff to build and sustain equitable, supportive, and durable internal institutions
  • Supporting the development of internal policies, practices, and culture.
  • Building a coherent organizational structure and making staffing decisions.
  • Ensuring consistent staff review, feedback, and professional growth.
  • Resolving conflicts and facilitating dialogue across the team.
  • Building a multicultural, multiethnic, diverse organization.
• Managing the staff’s relationship with Upturn’s Board of Directors
  • Seeking the Board’s guidance when major questions arise.
  • Preparing materials for Board meetings and related Board work.
  • Facilitating opportunities for staff-Board connection and collaboration.

You will join a growing organization — currently 12 full-time staff — that is caring, collaborative, and principled. We are committed to building an inclusive, flexible, and welcoming workplace. We have a transparent culture and include our entire staff when making major strategic decisions.

Work location

Upturn is a fully remote organization with a small in-person office in Washington DC. We will hire a qualified candidate who is work-authorized and can work remotely from anywhere in the United States, with a rough expectation of monthly travel based on organizational needs. Currently, the majority of our staff is based in the DC area, with several other colleagues across the US. We are committed to working collaboratively to create an equitable workplace, no matter your location. We will provide office space to staff who desire to work from an office in DC or elsewhere in the US.

Compensation and benefits

The Executive Director salary is $195,000. The salary is set according to our publicly available compensation policy, which includes a 3:1 ratio between the highest and lowest paid staff, and as such is not negotiable.

We provide a generous and comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, vision, and disability insurance; a 403(b) retirement plan with a 10% employer contribution; open paid time off and flexible work hours; a monthly transit benefit for DC-based employees; employer-sponsored medical and dependent care FSAs; a monthly home office reimbursement; a paid sabbatical after five years of full-time work; and an annual professional development fund.

About You

We welcome applicants with at least 10 years of senior leadership and with demonstrated experience in the following areas:

• Mission advancement and programmatic strategy
  • Professional experience advancing equity, justice, and civil rights, demonstrated by a commitment to social change and alignment with Upturn’s values.
  • Ability to develop and continually refine a long-term political vision that advances Upturn’s mission.
  • Ability to effectively represent Upturn with external audiences, including philanthropic organizations and national and local partners.
  • Ability to analyze and explain how technology shapes people’s rights and opportunities.
  • Ability to move the organization through uncertain political terrain.
• Institutional strengthening and internal operations
  • Successful institutional fundraising experience, ideally at levels comparable to Upturn’s annual budget (approximately $2 million).
  • Demonstrated fundraising skills (e.g., prospecting and cultivation, grant writing, and relationship building with donors and philanthropic organizations).
  • Experience with organizational finances, including financial planning and risk management, ideally with similar-sized budgets.
  • Experience overseeing organizational legal compliance.
• Leadership and management
  • Ability to work collaboratively and consensually with staff to strengthen internal culture, practices, and norms.
  • Experience with effective people management, including developing supervision, professional development, and accountability systems.
  • A collaborative leadership style and a commitment to inclusive and staff-centered decision-making practices.
  • Demonstrated experience leading and building multicultural, multiethnic, and diverse organizations.
  • Brings responsiveness, follow-through, and accountability to their own executive leadership.

Upturn is an equal opportunity employer. We strongly encourage applications from people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, and people most impacted by systemic injustice.

Application and Interview Process

Applications are due by November 24, 2025. Use this form to apply.

We want our application and interview process to be transparent for applicants. Not every candidate will move on to each stage of this process; we will update candidates about their status in the application process as quickly as possible. At a minimum, the process will consist of the following stages, as outlined in the anticipated timeline below.

• Application deadline — November 24, 2025
• Interview invitations sent — December 2025
• Round 1 interviews with 10 candidates — January 2026
• Round 2 interviews with 5-6 candidates — February 2026
• Round 3 interviews with 2-3 candidates — March 2026
• Offer made — March 2026
• Ideal start date — May 2026

We will work with applicants to provide reasonable accommodations during each stage of this process.

Anjan Chaudhry, a consultant supporting Upturn’s ED search process, will serve as the main point of contact for applicants. If you have any questions, please email Anjan at edtransition@upturn.org.

We provide a generous and comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, vision, and disability insurance; a 403(b) retirement plan with a 10% employer contribution; open paid time off and flexible work hours; a monthly transit benefit for DC-based employees; employer-sponsored medical and dependent care FSAs; a monthly home office reimbursement; a paid sabbatical after five years of full-time work; and an annual professional development fund.