Chief of Staff

The Chief of Staff will serve as a strategic partner and force multiplier to the CEO and broader organization, helping translate priorities into action, improve clarity and follow-through, and create greater capacity across a lean, fast-moving team. This role will strengthen how Phare Bio communicates with boards, donors, funders, strategic partners, and other external audiences while helping the team identify and pursue high-value opportunities.

This is a highly influential and hands-on role at the intersection of strategy, science, communications, partnerships, and execution. You will work closely with the CEO and leaders across Phare Bio to shape narratives, prepare high-stakes materials, advance partnership opportunities, and ensure the organization presents its work with clarity, accuracy, and impact.

This role is ideal for a strategic operator who thrives in a small-team environment, enjoys making sense of complexity, brings sound judgment to ambiguous situations, and is equally comfortable shaping the big picture and doing the detailed work required to make it happen.

CEO Partnership & Strategic Execution:

• Serve as a trusted thought partner to the CEO, helping pressure-test priorities, evaluate opportunities, clarify decisions, and maintain focus on the organization’s highest-value work.
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• Translate evolving priorities and ideas into clear objectives, owners, timelines, decisions, and  actionable next steps.
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• Help create greater capacity for the CEO by identifying what requires her direct involvement, what can be delegated, and what can be advanced independently.
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• Establish mechanisms to ensure important decisions, commitments, and follow-up do not fall through the cracks.

External Affairs & Stakeholder Engagement:

• Partner with the CEO and leadership team to strengthen Phare Bio’s engagement with key external stakeholders, including board members, donors, funders, strategic partners, collaborators, and other influential audiences.
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• Identify and prepare for high-value external opportunities, ensuring leaders have the context, materials, and messaging needed for each engagement.
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• Develop stakeholder strategies, briefs, talking points, and follow-up plans that strengthen relationships and move important conversations forward.
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• Prepare the CEO and senior leaders for conferences, speaking engagements, fundraising conversations, board discussions, partner meetings, media opportunities, and other high impact moments.

Executive Communications & Storytelling:

• Own the development of high-quality external-facing presentations, briefings, talking points, memos, and other strategic communications.
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• Serve as a strategic review layer for important materials across the organization before they reach the CEO, helping improve clarity, quality, and readiness.
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• Determine which materials require the CEO’s direct review and which can be refined or resolved independently.
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• Translate complex scientific, technical, and organizational information into clear, compelling narratives tailored to different audiences.
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• Work closely with scientists and functional leaders to ensure external materials are scientifically accurate, accessible, persuasive, and appropriately nuanced.
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• Serve as a strategic and editorial thought partner on messaging for complex or high-stakes external conversations.

Partnerships & External Opportunities:

• Own the development and advancement of Phare Bio’s strategic partnership pipeline, including opportunities with pharmaceutical companies, AI drug-discovery organizations, research collaborators, and other potential partners.
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• Conduct stakeholder and landscape research, prepare meeting briefs, track conversations and commitments, and ensure thoughtful follow-through across active opportunities.
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• Help shape how Phare Bio presents potential collaborations, anticipates partner needs, and approaches external opportunities.
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• Manage the day-to-day operating cadence for active partnerships, including coordinating cross-functional inputs, tracking commitments and materials, and ensuring consistent follow through.

Strategic Initiatives & Cross-Functional Leadership:

• Lead and execute high-priority initiatives that span Phare Bio’s scientific and business teams or do not naturally sit within a single function.
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• Work across teams to clarify ownership, identify dependencies, surface bottlenecks, and keep important initiatives moving.
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• Step into areas of unclear ownership when needed, helping solve the problem rather than allowing ambiguity to stall progress.
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• Help strengthen organizational planning, prioritization, communication, and follow-through as Phare Bio continues to grow.

Communications Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Provide leadership, mentorship, and strategic direction to Phare Bio’s communications function.
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• Partner with scientific and business leaders to align internal expertise with the organization’s external narrative and priorities.
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• Establish an effective approach to developing and reviewing external materials that allows the team to move quickly without sacrificing accuracy or quality.
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• Build strong relationships across functions and influence outcomes through credibility, judgment, collaboration, and strong execution.

Experience & Expertise:

• 7+ years in chief of staff, external affairs, strategy and operations, strategic communications, corporate affairs, partnerships, or a related function, ideally within biotech, life sciences, healthcare, or another technically complex organization.
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• A track record of working with senior external stakeholders, such as board members, donors, funders, strategic partners, pharmaceutical companies, or research collaborators.
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• Experience working closely with a CEO, founder, senior executive, or executive leadership team, with demonstrated ability to build trust, manage upward, exercise discretion, and provide constructive challenge.
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• Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional initiatives through influence rather than formal authority.
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• Exceptional writing, editing, and storytelling skills, with the ability to turn complex scientific and strategic information into clear, compelling narratives.
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• Strong presentation-development skills, including the ability to personally build and refine executive-level decks, briefings, and talking points.
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• Comfort working directly with scientists and technical leaders to understand nuanced information and communicate complex concepts accurately to non-technical audiences.
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• Experience managing strategic partnerships and external collaborations, including stakeholder research, meeting preparation, cross-functional coordination, messaging, and  follow-through.
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• Success operating in a startup, growth-stage organization, or other fast-moving environment where leaders are expected to be both strategic and hands-on.
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• Biotech or life sciences experience is strongly preferred. Exposure to therapeutics, drug development, pharmaceuticals, or AI-enabled drug discovery is a plus.

Who You Are:

A Trusted Executive Partner: You understand that being a strong partner to a CEO does not mean simply saying yes. You can ask the right questions, challenge constructively, help narrow priorities, and provide candid counsel while building deep trust over time.

A Strategic Communicator: You understand audiences, relationships, positioning, and opportunity. You can absorb complicated scientific and strategic information and turn it into a compelling narrative, polished presentation, or thoughtful external message.

Scientifically Curious and Credible: You do not need to be a scientist, but you enjoy working with technical experts, asking thoughtful questions, and learning enough to represent complex work accurately and confidently.

Persuasive Without Sacrificing Accuracy: You know how to make a story compelling while respecting scientific rigor. You are comfortable engaging in healthy back-and-forth with technical colleagues to find language that is both accurate and effective.

A High-Judgment Operator: You are thoughtful about audience, context, timing, confidentiality, and tradeoffs. You know when to push, when to listen, and how to adapt your approach to different stakeholders.

Low-Ego and Collaborative: You care more about the organization succeeding than receiving credit. You respect the expertise of others, invite feedback, and are comfortable having your ideas challenged in pursuit of a better result.

Hands-On and Adaptable: You are comfortable moving between strategy and execution. You do not need a perfect brief or established playbook and are willing to personally build the deck, draft the briefing, conduct the research, or prepare the team when needed.

Curious and Open-Minded: You are intellectually curious about science, AI, biotechnology, novel business models, and the range of stakeholders required to advance Phare Bio’s mission.

Why Phare Bio?

Work on a problem that matters. Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the world’s most urgent global health challenges. Your work will directly support an organization focused on developing urgently needed new antibiotics.

Help build at an inflection point. Phare Bio is expanding its AI-enabled discovery capabilities and therapeutic pipeline, creating an opportunity to help shape how the organization engages the external partners and stakeholders who can accelerate its mission.

Work at the intersection of AI and drug discovery. You will have a front-row seat to the application of cutting-edge generative AI to one of the most difficult and consequential challenges in medicine.

Partner directly with the CEO and leadership team. You will work closely with leaders across science, fundraising, partnerships, communications, and organizational strategy.

Make a visible contribution. In a lean organization, your work will directly influence how Phare Bio tells its story, builds relationships, and pursues external opportunities.

Location & Travel:

This is a full-time, fully remote position aligned to Eastern Time (ET) working hours. Monthly travel to New York and/or Boston will be required; candidates based in or near these locations will be given priority consideration. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Phare Bio provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees and does not  unlawfully discriminate on the basis of any characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local  law.

Ready to join us in revolutionizing antibiotic discovery? Submit your resume to careers@pharebio.org, we would love to hear from you!