Culture & Community Communications lead

About the Team OpenAI’s Product & Research Communications team helps people understand our technology, what it makes possible, and how to use it. We bring new products and research to the world and tell stories about the people making these tools their own. We work closely with our Culture & Community Engagement team to connect our products with people’s interests, ambitions, and everyday lives. Together, we help more people discover what they can create, learn, and do with AI—and bring their experiences back into how we communicate. About the Role We’re looking for a Community Communications Lead to bring OpenAI’s products closer to communities and help their stories reach a wider audience. Sitting on the Product & Research Communications team, you’ll work hand in hand with the Culture & Community team to shape narratives, develop earned media opportunities, and amplify community-driven stories across organic communications channels. You’ll be involved from the beginning of campaigns and community programs, bringing ideas that strengthen the story, cultural relevance, and opportunities for participation. Working closely with Culture & Community Engagement leaders, you’ll contribute communications strategy while respecting their ownership of campaign and creative decisions. You’ll also connect individual campaigns, partnerships, and community moments into a broader story that develops over time. You’ll have the judgment to know when the work has earned a larger conversation—and the relationships and storytelling skills to make it happen. We’re looking for someone with cultural curiosity, strong editorial taste, initiative, judgment and an entrepreneurial approach. You understand what makes people care and how community trust is built. You keep our claims grounded, can navigate skepticism about AI and understand how a story can invite people to take part. This role can be based in San Francisco or New York. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Be in the room as we shape the narrative. Help develop the story, cultural angle and earned comms opportunity from the beginning. Bring ideas that make the campaign itself stronger, while deferring campaign and creative decisions to Communications and Culture & Community Engagement leaders. Think beyond a campaign to connect the multiple beats/campaigns into one overarching narrative for our Culture & Community Engagement team that resonates with press and creators. Help our work earn the right to be discussed by press: launch campaigns first, then, after fans fall in love with the work, tell a chronicle press story following the experience, with a spokesperson sharing the team’s mandate and the people who make it happen. Help us move from AI subculture into pop and mass culture. Have the instincts and relationships to reach people through sport, music, design, food, fandom, etc. Understand what makes those audiences care and where they get their information. Build relationships with journalists, creators and cultural voices. Find the stories inside our communities. Work closely with the community team to surface compelling builders, small businesses, students and unexpected people making the tools their own. Help them tell stories in their own voices, grounded in what they’re trying to achieve. Make participation part of the story. A big ambition for us is giving people and communities things to create, learn and do together, challenged by a creator or brand. Understand how storytelling can invite more people into that experience and how community contributions become the next chapter. Sustain an ongoing narrative. Build a rhythm of stories across creator campaigns, community programs and partnerships. Find the follow-through—the making, the contributions, the outcomes—that keeps the work interesting over months, through earned media and OpenAI’s communications channels. Develop pitches, features, spokesperson opportunities, and channel content that connect individual stories to a larger narrative, supported by the work and its results. Connect the work globally. Partner with regional comms and our territory leads so we have a clear shared story with locally relevant voices and cultural angles, supported by local examples. Bring community perspectives and feedback into product communications planning, helping the team understand what resonates, what needs explanation, and where new stories are emerging. You might thrive in this role if you: Have experience leading communications for consumer brands, cultural campaigns, creator initiatives, or community programs, with a track record of earning meaningful attention. Have strong cultural instincts and relationships beyond technology media. You understand what different audiences care about, whom they trust, and where they get their information. Are an excellent writer and editor who can find the la