Head of Communications

About Us

Astera is a private foundation on a mission to steer science and technology toward an abundant future for all. We believe the coming years will bring an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement as exponential progress in AI converges with central advances in other fields to dramatically accelerate innovation. This inflection point provides an unparalleled opportunity to fundamentally rethink the institutions, systems, and tools that drive scientific progress. We are searching for visionary leaders who are compelled by the challenge of driving transformative change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated. You can read more about our mission, vision, and programming here.

Astera is in a unique position to contribute to the course of rapid scientific and technological innovation, relative to other foundations, owing to a combination of:

• A $2.5B endowment, which we actually intend to use rather than growing and maintaining in perpetuity.
• A small, agile team: We are staffed much more leanly than other foundations, and aim to keep bureaucracy as minimal as possible. It's more accurate to think of us as a startup than a traditional foundation.
• High risk tolerance: We take an experimental approach to our programming that means we expect projects to fail with some frequency.
• Disinterest in consensus: We want to add value specifically by supporting projects, programs, and people that other organizations can't or won't support.

Position Summary

Transparency is one of Astera's four core principles: it multiplies our impact by ensuring that what we learn compounds beyond our organization. We are committed to leaving the ladder down by making it easy for others to observe, copy, and reuse whatever we do, and build this into our programming at a foundational level. More broadly, we are also interested in supporting and creating resources that we believe can help accelerate meaningful and valuable progress in the world. You can see the pieces we've published to date here.

We are seeking a leader who can embody our commitment to transparency through driving our communications program into a strategic platform that shapes thinking and new conversations about science, technology, and progress for our intended audiences.

Reporting to the COO, the Head of Communications will bring and use several key strengths:

1. A passion for communicating science, with experience and understanding of existing topics and conversations that will resonate in science and deep tech communities, as well as enthusiasm for following and understanding the impactful work going on internally Astera

2. The discipline necessary to navigate multiple stakeholders and stay ahead of an ambitious, regular publishing calendar

3. The ability to develop and execute on a broader strategy for a compelling communications platform that penetrates the niche networks across Astera's work to compound our ability to contribute to the course of rapid scientific and technological innovation

Less important (for example) are a PR and media background, a marketing and analytics background, or amazing graphics and technical skills.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Planning:

• Build, iterate, and execute on Astera's communications strategy
• Establish processes for content publication including development of the calendar, approvals, and cross-platform publishing
• Cultivate relevant communities and audiences for Astera
• Spearhead ideas to grow Astera's footprint to new channels and venues (e.g. events, podcasts, etc.) with the leadership team

Content Development and Quality:

• Develop content in partnership with internal and external stakeholders
• Own quality control for all published content
• Engage with the internal Astera community to identify key content themes
• Manage specialized vendors to achieve communications objectives

Platform Management:

• Own and manage the externally facing website and social media accounts

Qualifications

To work with us, you must:

Understand that trying to build an extraordinary organization requires tenacity, ownership, and agency from every member of the team. This means: You love the challenge of coming up with surprising solutions to problems we don't even know we have and see options where others only see constraints.

Embody the flexibility needed to thrive in a startup-like environment. This means: You don't expect to maintain strong boundaries around what "isn't your job," and recognize that the role you're being hired for might evolve significantly over the course of 6-12 months.

Understand and be entirely dedicated to leveraging the incredible opportunity we have to meaningfully steer the future of science and technology. This means: You're always looking beyond solving the object-level problem to figure out if there's a deeper or more systemic shift we can initiate - looking to cure the disease rather than treat the symptoms.

Be creative, curious, and on the lookout for market failures and other unique opportunities to support transformative emerging technology in ways other funders can't or won't. This means: When you notice something is broken in the world, your first question is "can we fix it?" - even if it's not the kind of thing we're doing already.

Believe you are capable of creating the best vehicle in the world for unleashing the capacity of extraordinary individuals to build public goods for science and technology, and that it is your responsibility to do so. This means: Your standards for excellence are exceedingly high and internally dictated; you don't level-set by reference to what other foundations are doing. You find yourself asking, "can we do this 10x better than anyone else?"

Recognize the compounding effect that a culture of respectful but direct feedback has on organizational capacity over time, and be excited to contribute to that culture via relationships and interactions with people who are above, below, or next to you in an org chart. This means: You habitually narrate your internal reactions as an overlay on object-level conversations, rather than leaving them in the background; you notice and externalize "the question behind the question."

Operate with the highest levels of integrity, judgment, and stewardship. This means, among other things: You treat grantees and investees in ways that respect the value of their time, energy, and contributions.

Embrace experimentation as the primary driver of progress, with a bias to action instead of deliberation. This means: You have the courage to launch and iterate on thoughtfully designed experiments rather than obsessing over perfect plans that never launch.

In addition, the following are helpful:

• Enthusiasm and demonstrated experience in publishing science in an accessible way
• Experience managing complex projects and stakeholders
• Strategy development experience
• Comms experience from a deep tech-focused VC firm might be an archetype

Location

Roles are in-person in Emeryville, California.