Program Lead, North America

Seismic is a global foundation dedicated to providing the specialist marketing and communications expertise that the responsible AI community needs to build the public and political demand necessary for Responsible AI. Decision-makers and the general public need a much better understanding of the challenges posed by transformative AI—be they catastrophic risk or more proximate harms - if societies are to successfully navigate its development.

Partnering with policy and advocacy groups, we use the power of modern media, evidence-based strategy, and breakthrough creative storytelling to build understanding, create urgency, and drive civil society action aimed at reducing risks from advanced AI systems.

The Role

The Program Lead is the operational engine behind Seismic’s North American campaigns. Overseeing the whole North America operation end-to-end, you deliver projects on time, on brief, and to the standard of quality our partners deserve.

You will own the architecture of campaign execution: scoping and briefing creative vendors, managing timelines across concurrent projects, coordinating with advocacy coalitions, and running the feedback loops that keep every initiative sharp. This is a role for someone who has thrived in a fast-moving agency or campaign environment and gets genuine satisfaction from turning a strategic vision into a delivered, measurable result.

You will work closely with the Executive Director and Seismic’s global team, serving as the connective tissue between strategy and execution, fluent in both and trusted by both sides. You will not manage a direct team of full-time employees, but will lead a roster of external creative agencies, PR partners, digital specialists, and coalition contacts, holding them to high standards while keeping relationships collaborative.

What You’ll Do

Own Campaign Operations End-to-End: Manage the full lifecycle of Seismic’s North American campaigns, from initial scoping and creative brief through production, delivery, measurement, and retrospective. Build and maintain project plans, timelines, and workflows across multiple concurrent programs, ensuring nothing slips. You are the person who catches problems before they become crises.

Lead Agency & Vendor Relationships: Serve as the primary day-to-day contact for external creative agencies, PR firms, digital marketing partners, polling vendors, and media trackers. Write clear, tight briefs. Manage deliverables and feedback cycles. Hold partners accountable to timelines and quality without micromanaging. Know when to escalate and when to solve it yourself.

Orchestrate Partner & Coalition Coordination: Coordinate with 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) partners and advocacy coalitions on joint campaign activities, integrating their contributions smoothly into broader program plans. Prepare partner-facing materials, status updates, and progress recaps that keep stakeholders aligned and enables the Executive Director to focus on relationship development and strategy.

Drive Campaign Measurement & Learning: Track campaign KPIs, manage reporting cadences, and run rigorous test-and-learn feedback loops. Synthesize data from media tracking, audience research, and digital analytics into clear, actionable assessments. Turn learning into better briefs, better creative direction, and sharper campaign design over time.

Oversee Content & Production Pipelines: Manage the production flow for creative assets across digital, social, and traditional channels, from brief to final delivery. Maintain project schedules and work closely with the comms & operations teams to manage editorial calendars, asset libraries & more. Coordinate Seismic’s US-based creative, social, and strategy specialists to ensure integrated, on-brand output with every campaign.

Manage Compliance Across All Campaign Activity: Ensure that every campaign action, from vendor contracts and partner agreements to creative assets and media placements, adheres to Seismic’s applicable legal and regulatory requirements. You are the operational checkpoint: proactively flagging risks, maintaining documentation trails, seeking guidance at the right moment and ensuring that all creative work produced for or with our partners meets the standards required of a 501(c)(3).

Who Might Be a Good Fit

Agency-Trained Operator: You have 10+ years of experience in a PR, integrated communications, or advocacy-facing agency—or a strong mix of agency and in-house campaign work. You know what disciplined client service looks like and bring that rigor to every internal and external relationship. Comfort with ambiguity, fast timelines, and shifting priorities is second nature.

Campaign Execution Expertise: You have a demonstrated track record of running complex, multi-stakeholder campaigns end-to-end. You’ve managed creative agencies, media buyers, and advocacy partners simultaneously. You hold the whole thing together, maintain standards, and deliver.

Systems & Process Thinker: You build the workflows, templates, and feedback mechanisms that let a lean team punch above its weight. You are fluent in project management methodologies and know which tools and structures to reach for. You spot where process is missing before it becomes a problem.

Clear, Concise Communicator: You write tight briefs, clean status updates, and sharp recaps. You can move between the language of strategy and the language of production without losing fidelity in either direction. You communicate with confidence up, down, and sideways, with partners, vendors, and leadership alike.

Washington & Policy Literacy: You have some familiarity with the Washington advocacy landscape, on how policy campaigns are run, how civil society organizations operate, and how communications intersects with legislative and regulatory processes. You don't need to be a policy expert, but comfort navigating the DC environment and an ability to read the political room will serve you well in this role. Experience working with or alongside 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations is particularly relevant.

Mission-Aligned: You have a genuine interest in AI governance, responsible technology policy, or cause-driven communications. You don’t need to be a policy expert, but you need to care about the stakes and be motivated by the idea that communications work can genuinely shape how society navigates transformative AI.

Compensation

The expected baseline compensation for the role is $120,000–$150,000, divided between a fixed base salary and an unconditional 401(k) grant to US hires. Seismic also offers extensive benefits packages - to be discussed in detail with candidates.

Why Join Us?

At Seismic, we sit at the frontier of the most important conversation of our time. As Program Lead, you will have the opportunity to manage the operational backbone of a movement - not just manage campaigns, but shape how a nascent field tells its story to the public and to policymakers. You will be supported by a global infrastructure and a team that takes both the mission and the craft of communications seriously.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV and a brief cover letter to info@seismic.org with “Program Lead” in the subject line. We are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate a track record of delivering high-impact campaigns from brief to result in a PR, integrated, or advocacy-facing agency environment, and who bring the operational discipline to run multiple programs simultaneously without losing sight of quality or mission.

Seismic also offers extensive benefits packages - to be discussed in detail with candidates.