Retreats Associate

About CEA

The Centre for Effective Altruism’s mission is to build and nurture a global community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking impactful action to solve them.
To foster this community, we run conferences, support hundreds of local groups, and provide online resources and forums for discussion.

About this role

We are looking to hire a Retreats Associate to help us scale and improve our program, aimed at nurturing a community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking action to solve them. In this role, you’ll support a wide range of operational projects to help the Retreats Program succeed and grow.
About the Retreats Program
The Retreats Program supports the Centre for Effective Altruism’s mission by providing high-quality discussion spaces, designed to increase the number of connections made and the quality of information shared among members of the effective altruism community. We currently produce events focused on facilitating coordination amongst the most promising and motivated people in the effective altruism community, as well as field-specific events in collaboration with experts.
We want to scale the Retreats Program because we are excited about the potential of retreats to provide spaces for cutting-edge discussions, coordination, and training within specific fields, as well as opportunities for the most promising and motivated people to have easy and direct access to the advice, mentorship, co-founders, friends, and hires they need to most improve the world.
About the Role
You would take on much of the day-to-day object-level tasks needed to make retreats happen so that we can run and support more retreat-style events. You would be managed by Sophie Thomson and work closely with her and our ambitious and growing team.
Your core responsibilities would include:
  • Executing project plans, including conducting venue searches, researching and communicating with vendors, ordering and organising inventory, and creating participant guides.
  • Working onsite to produce events, including assisting with the build and strike, organising the inventory and ensuring each space is stocked with the items required to facilitate the event’s goals, responding to onsite attendee requests, tracking the attendee experience and proactively noticing things we can do to improve it.
  • Analysing attendee feedback, including evaluating our impact and identifying areas for improvement.
  • Improving our processes and centralising our resources.
  • Tracking expenses and updating budgets.
As a new and growing program, it’s hard to anticipate everything you might be asked to do as part of this role, so it’s important that you are passionate about CEA’s goals and are willing to take on whatever tasks will best help us achieve them.
Who Might Be a Good Fit
You might be a great fit for this work if you are:
  • Enthusiastic to take on a support role. You are excited to provide an excellent retreat experience and are eager to own a range of non-glamorous tasks to do so.
  • Detail-oriented and conscientious. You have a track record of working methodically, tracking lots of small yet important details, and not getting easily sidetracked. You enjoy utilising and improving systems and processes.
  • Attendee focused. You would be energised by responding to attendees’ needs and anticipating their unstated ones, while being reliably professional and approachable.
  • Flexible and work well under pressure. You’d thrive having a varied and somewhat unpredictable work routine and would continue to execute efficiently on your priorities despite changing locations, time zones, and unforeseen challenges.
If you are on the fence about applying, we would really encourage you to go for it (the initial application shouldn’t take long). Above all, we are looking for people who are motivated to contribute to our mission to nurture a community of people who are thinking carefully about the world’s biggest problems and taking action to solve them.
Salary, Benefits and Location
  • This is a full-time, remote position, with a requirement for frequent travel. We prefer applicants who are able to work in time zones between US Pacific Time and CET.
  • If candidates would prefer to work from the UK, we welcome applicants from overseas and we’ll sponsor visas where possible.
  • We’d love you to start as soon as possible though we’re happy to negotiate on later start dates.
  • Salary for candidates in Oxford is £48,800-£53,700 depending on experience, with some flexibility above this range for an exceptional candidate. Salaries for candidates who prefer to work remotely will be decided based on location and skills. (As rough calibration points, the salary range for the Bay Area is $88,700-$98,400, and for Boston is $85,500-$94,900, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.)
  • In the UK, benefits include private insurance, flexible work hours, a £5,000 annual professional development allowance, a £5,000 mental health support allowance, extended parental leave, ergonomic equipment, 10% pension contribution, 25 days of paid vacation, and more. US staff benefits are equivalent.
Application Process
Our application process includes: one or more trial tasks, interviews, a reference check, and an onsite work trial for the top candidates
We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from self-identified women and people of colour who are excited about contributing to our mission. The Centre for Effective Altruism is an equal opportunity employer.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact caitlin@centreforeffectivealtruism.org.
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This position is now closed.
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