Program Assistant (9 Months LTE ) at Gates Foundation

The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve.

We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

The India Country Office (ICO) business team cluster works on behalf of the organization to ensure a robust country strategy, effective and efficient planning and management of program portfolios, and dynamic learning and adaptation to achieve goals in a sustainable manner.

The cluster includes a team of Program Assistants who provide wide and varied administrative and organizational support for program and operations leaders and teams. Efficiency, attention to detail, timeliness, flexibility and good judgment are essential in this role to ensure smooth team operations.

Application Deadline: 29/5/2026

Your Role:

We are looking for an individual who enjoys working with people, has a sense of humor, exercises consistent good judgement, proactive thinking and action, owns assigned responsibilities, and acts with integrity.

The Program Assistant plays a key role in providing comprehensive administrative and logistical support to multiple principals, including those in leadership positions, as aligned with the organization’s evolving staffing model. The Assistant is responsible for managing complex calendars, scheduling a high volume of meetings across multiple time zones, and helping principals stay aligned with their most important priorities.

This is a limited-term position (LTE) for nine months, based at the Foundation’s ICO office in New Delhi, and reports to the Associate Manager, Executive Engagement and Program Administration. Relocation will not be provided.

What You’ll Do:

• Manage and keep up to date complex calendars for multiple program team members (principals).

• Proactively review schedules and support principals with planning (e.g., adding reminders for key deadlines and urgent tasks), resolving bottlenecks and recommending how to best allocate time/make trade-offs.

• Schedule and coordinate a high volume of internal and external meetings with partners across different time zones, facilitating high levels of participation in a hybrid environment.

• Act as a liaison with internal and external partners, grantees, government officials and consultants.

• Prioritize in clear and professional communications to ensure prompt responses to inquiries from internal and external partners.

• Liaise with travel coordinator to update calendars and with local transportation vendor for travel to government meetings.

• Support records and data management, including maintenance of SharePoint site for program and business teams and the ICO knowledge repository.

• Maintain an organized system of tracking, monitoring, and prioritizing tasks, and projects.

• Support field visits, including coordination with event planner/travel to manage logistics, support program teams with agenda, collateral preparation, and field notes, coordination with grantees/partners, etc.

• Support teams to organize internal and external events in seamless coordination with theoperations team, including logistics management, agenda and collateral development,report-outs, etc.

• Work closely with HR, business, and program teams to support staff on-boarding and offboarding, including guidance and initial handholding to navigate administrative processes and knowledge management and transfers.

• Perform other administrative tasks and special projects for leaders/team as needed.

Your Experience:

• Your Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Health, Engineering, Sciences or equivalent required.

• A minimum of 3 years of work experience in an administrative role for a complex and fast paced organization is preferred.

• Strategic problem solver who is able to look at tasks end to end and employs a forward-looking approach.

• Highly organized, thorough and dedicated to quality with a desire to drive efficiencies in processes and systems.

• Experience learning organizational priorities and how they align with the goals of a specific team.

• Ability to track rhythm of business while also dealing with ambiguity and change.

• Proven positive, pro-active, collaborative approach to work, including a dedication to client service and problem solving.

• Exercises high level of discretion and works with diplomacy and an “organization first” attitude.

• Experience setting priorities and meeting deadlines and goals while balancing needs of providing support to multiple individuals, including complex calendar and meeting/event planning and execution.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills; must be able to communicate effectively with diverse partners, and able to adjust to a wide variety of working styles.

• Highly proficient with MS Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel); fluency in SharePoint desirable.

Other Attributes

• Must have unrestricted work authorization in the country where this position is located

Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

We’re committed to providing an inclusive and accessible hiring experience for all candidates. If you have a disability or medical condition and need an accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process—such as an ASL interpreter, alternative interview format, or physical accessibility support—we’re happy to help. Please contact HR@gatesfoundation.org with the position number and a brief description of your accommodation needs. Requests will be handled confidentially.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.