Board Member

ERA - Board Member - Role Description

Role Description

Submit your expression of interest

ERA is a Cambridge-based research and talent organisation working to understand and mitigate risks from frontier AI. Over the past five years, we have supported 200+ researchers from 10+ countries through our fellowships and events, and our alumni have gone on to lead work at institutions including RAND and the UK AI Security Institute.

We are looking for 3-4 people, including a Chair, to form ERA’s first Board: to hold our Executive Director to account, oversee organisational performance, and provide strategic guidance as we deliver on our mission of mitigating catastrophic risks from frontier AI.

If you’re interested in joining our Board, please complete this form by Friday 14th August. We review expressions of interest as they arrive and invite candidates to interview on a rolling basis, so early submissions are encouraged.

About Us

Mission

To mitigate catastrophic risks from frontier AI by building the talent, community, and knowledge base the field needs - identifying and supporting exceptional researchers and entrepreneurs across technical AI safety, AI governance, and technical AI governance.

Our Work

ERA runs full-time, intensive programmes at the intersection of technical and governance research:

• ERA:AI Fellowship: our flagship 10-week, fully funded fellowship in Cambridge (30 fellows), with mentorship from researchers at organisations including UK AISI, RAND, GovAI, and Google DeepMind
• AIxBiosecurity Research Fellowship: a 10-week fellowship (15 fellows) at the intersection of AI and biosecurity
• Frontier AI Security Residency: a new 8-week residency (30 residents) launching in autumn 2026 focusing on AI verification & security.
• Events and field-building: including the Technical AI Governance Forum series and, as co-organisers, the 2025 Vegas AI Security Forum

Our culture and operating values centre on three pillars: integrity (doing the right thing, especially when no one is watching), intimacy (building genuine, psychologically safe relationships), and intensity (operating with focused urgency, because the stakes are high and time is limited).

Our Governance

ERA is currently a fiscally sponsored project of Meridian Impact CIC, and is preparing to incorporate as an independent organisation. We are seating our Board ahead of that transition: members will join now, help shape the spin-out, and form the board of the new entity once it is incorporated.

ERA’s funding has more than doubled in the past year and our programme portfolio has grown to match this. We are establishing a Board so that our governance keeps pace with that growth - and so that ERA’s strength and accountability are institutional. ERA’s Founder will also sit on the Board.

Responsibilities

As a Board member, you will provide governance and oversight of our team. In order of priority, this includes:

• Holding our Executive Director to account
• Approving important strategic decisions
• Evaluating organisational performance
• Testing the case for the organisation’s existence
• Cultivating a culture of good governance

Beyond this core, Board members provide advice (on strategy, fundraising, programme design and delivery, operations, and compliance), help establish and reinforce ERA’s credibility, and broker and strengthen relationships and networks on ERA’s behalf.

Having completed an initial onboarding process, Board members will be expected to invest time up-front in understanding ERA’s strategy, programmes, and operations; prepare for and attend Board meetings; connect the organisation to key people and institutions; and scan the horizon for risks and opportunities relevant to ERA’s work. We expect the time commitment to be, on average, 10 hours per quarter. The role is voluntary; reasonable expenses will be reimbursed

What we are looking for

We are particularly excited about working with individuals who:

• Are motivated by our mission and work
• Are experienced in areas that we expect to be represented at Board level. We don’t expect any one person to demonstrate experience in all of these, but do want to see each of them represented by at least one person on our Board:

• AI safety and/or AI governance - field credibility and enough context to constructively challenge our theory of change; technical AI safety or biosecurity knowledge is especially valuable
• Nonprofit finance and controls - financial oversight at £3–10M scale, grant compliance, and ideally experience of organisational spin-outs or restructuring
• Nonprofit governance and leadership - supporting leadership teams, executive review, and staff transitions
• Government and institutions - UK policy or institutional leadership experience (government, civil service, or academia)

• Are connected to organisations and individuals that might further our work

• Ideally, at least one member of the Board will be based in or near Cambridge

• Understand what good governance is, and how they might contribute to this
• Have the capacity to contribute at the required level

You do not need to come from the AI safety ecosystem: we actively welcome candidates who bring strong governance, finance, or institutional experience from other fields.

Process

If you are interested in joining our Board, please submit your expression of interest by Friday 14th August. We review applications on a rolling basis, so you may hear from us before the deadline. Following this, we expect the process to look like:

• An interview with Nandini Shiralkar, Founder (held on a rolling basis, completed by Friday 21st August)
• An (optional and unassessed) opportunity to meet another member of the ERA team (w/c 24th August)
• Appointments made and communicated by Friday 28th August

If you have any questions about the role or the process, please contact hello@erafellowship.org.

Submit your expression of interest