South America Lead, Global Affairs (Sao Paulo)

About the Role** OpenAI is seeking a strategic, entrepreneurial, and highly capable leader to serve as our South America Lead. In this role, you will build and execute OpenAI’s public policy and strategic engagement efforts across South America—during a period of exceptional momentum for AI governance, innovation, and infrastructure development. Reporting to the Head of LatAm Public Policy, you will lead OpenAI’s work with the governments in South America, regulators, academic institutions, industry partners, civil society, and the broader South American innovation ecosystem. You will anticipate and shape political, policy and regulatory trends, support public-sector and enterprise adoption of AI technologies, and identify opportunities for strategic partnerships across the region. **This role will involve:** **Strategy & leadership:** - Develop and implement OpenAI’s Public Policy strategy in South America, aligning global priorities with political, policy, and partnership opportunities at the regional level. **Stakeholder & political engagement:** - Cultivate direct relationships with federal, state and city-level policymakers, regulators, ministerial officials, and civil society leaders. - Anticipate and shape legislative, regulatory, and political developments related to AI and any other matters relevant to OpenAI such as innovation, safety, infrastructure, and economic development. **Partnerships & ecosystem building:** - Identify and develop partnerships across finance, academia, agriculture, industry and the health sector to enable responsible AI deployment. - Support enterprise and public-sector adoption of AI tools, collaborating closely with OpenAI’s commercial and technical teams. **Implementation & execution:** - Translate strategy into implementation plans with clear timelines, partner engagement plans, goals, and deliverables. - Produce insights, memos, activity updates, and recommendations for internal and executive audiences. - Organize and lead meetings, events, roundtables, and official engagements across Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and other countries. **Cross-functional collaboration:** - Work closely with research, engineering, product, legal, communications, and partnerships teams to align policy strategies with technical roadmaps and company priorities. - Ensure South American perspectives inform OpenAI’s global work on safety, governance, and deployment. **You’ll thrive in this role if you:** - Are a seasoned operator at the intersection of public policy, technology, and government relations, comfortable navigating complex, rapidly evolving environments. - Are a relationship-builder who earns trust with senior leaders in government, academia, and industry. - Enjoy working in a high-energy, start-up-style environment and are willing to roll up your sleeves—operating with humility, good judgment, and optimism. - Thrive both independently and as part of a collaborative, high-performing, peer-led team. - Are a compelling communicator who can translate complex technical and policy concepts into clear, persuasive narratives for diverse audiences. - Are energized by cross-functional work and can bring technical, legal, commercial, and operational teams together around shared goals. **We’re looking for a blend of:** - 15+ years of experience in public policy, government relations, technology policy, economic development, or a related field. - Demonstrated success engaging federal governments across multiple jurisdictions. - Proven ability to shape legislation or regulation, lead high-stakes policy campaigns, or build strategic partnerships across public and private sectors. - Experience advising senior executives on political, regulatory, and public-affairs risks and opportunities. - Deep knowledge of South America’s political, regulatory, and economic ecosystem—including AI-related issues such as copyright, safety, privacy, innovation, competition, and infrastructure. - Outstanding communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills with a track record of influencing senior stakeholders. - Experience working cross-functionally across legal, research, communications, commercial, and policy teams. - Strong strategic judgment, integrity, situational awareness, and political instincts. **About OpenAI** OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. For additional information, please see [OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possessi