I appreciate you sharing this additional info and reflections, Julia.
I notice you mention being friends with Owen, but, as far as I can tell, the post, your comment, and other comments don’t highlight that Owen was on the board of (what’s now called) EV UK when you learned about this incident and tried to figure out how to deal with it, and EV UK was the umbrella organization hosting the org (CEA) that was employing you (including specifically for this work).[1]This seems to me like a key potential conflict of interest, and like it may have warranted someone outside CEA being looped in to decide what to do about this incident. At first glance, I feel confused about this not having been mentioned in these comments. I’d be curious to hear whether you explicitly thought about that when you were thinking about this incident in 2021?
That is, if I understand correctly, in some sense Owen had a key position of authority in an organization that in turn technically had authority over the organization you worked at. That said, my rough impression from the outside is that, prior to November 2022, the umbrella organization in practice exerted little influence over what the organizations it hosted did. So this conflict of interest was probably in practice weaker than it would’ve looked on paper. But still it seems noteworthy.
More generally, this makes me realise that it seems like it would be valuable for the community health team to:
have a standard protocol for dealing with reports/​incidents related to leadership or board members at CEA itself, EV UK, and EV US
And perhaps also to other staff at those orgs, and senior staff at any funder providing these orgs with (say) >10% of their funding (which I’d guess might just be Open Phil?)
have that protocol try to reduce reliance on the community health team’s own judgment/​actions in those cases
Probably meaning finding someone similarly suited to this kind of work but who sits outside of those lines of authority, who can deal with the small minority of cases that this protocol applies to. Or perhaps multiple people, each handling a different subset of cases.
(I’m not saying this should extend to the other orgs EV UK /​ EV US host, e.g. GWWC or 80k, just CEA and the umbrella orgs themselves.)
I’d be curious to hear whether such a thing is already in place, and if so what it looks like.
I’m certainly not an expert on how these sorts of things should be handled.
I think your team has a tricky job that has to involve many tradeoffs.
I think it’s probably disproportionately common for the times when your actions were followed by bad outcomes (even if that wasn’t caused by your action, or was you making a good bet but getting unlucky) to become visible and salient.
I think there are likely many considerations I’m missing.
I didn’t saliently notice worries or ideas about how should the community health team should handle various conflicts of interest prior to November 2022, and didn’t saliently notice the question of what to do about incidents relating to senior staff at CEA /​ EV UK /​ EV US until this morning, and of course things tend to be easier to spot in hindsight. (OTOH I just hadn’t spent much time thinking about the community health team at all, since it wasn’t very relevant to my job.)
I appreciate you sharing this additional info and reflections, Julia.
I notice you mention being friends with Owen, but, as far as I can tell, the post, your comment, and other comments don’t highlight that Owen was on the board of (what’s now called) EV UK when you learned about this incident and tried to figure out how to deal with it, and EV UK was the umbrella organization hosting the org (CEA) that was employing you (including specifically for this work).[1] This seems to me like a key potential conflict of interest, and like it may have warranted someone outside CEA being looped in to decide what to do about this incident. At first glance, I feel confused about this not having been mentioned in these comments. I’d be curious to hear whether you explicitly thought about that when you were thinking about this incident in 2021?
That is, if I understand correctly, in some sense Owen had a key position of authority in an organization that in turn technically had authority over the organization you worked at. That said, my rough impression from the outside is that, prior to November 2022, the umbrella organization in practice exerted little influence over what the organizations it hosted did. So this conflict of interest was probably in practice weaker than it would’ve looked on paper. But still it seems noteworthy.
More generally, this makes me realise that it seems like it would be valuable for the community health team to:
have a standard protocol for dealing with reports/​incidents related to leadership or board members at CEA itself, EV UK, and EV US
And perhaps also to other staff at those orgs, and senior staff at any funder providing these orgs with (say) >10% of their funding (which I’d guess might just be Open Phil?)
have that protocol try to reduce reliance on the community health team’s own judgment/​actions in those cases
Probably meaning finding someone similarly suited to this kind of work but who sits outside of those lines of authority, who can deal with the small minority of cases that this protocol applies to. Or perhaps multiple people, each handling a different subset of cases.
(I’m not saying this should extend to the other orgs EV UK /​ EV US host, e.g. GWWC or 80k, just CEA and the umbrella orgs themselves.)
I’d be curious to hear whether such a thing is already in place, and if so what it looks like.
Caveats in a footnote. [2]
(I wrote this just in a personal capacity. I didn’t run this by anyone.)
I’n not sure if this terminology is exactly right. I’m drawing on the post CEA Disambiguation.
:
I’m certainly not an expert on how these sorts of things should be handled.
I think your team has a tricky job that has to involve many tradeoffs.
I think it’s probably disproportionately common for the times when your actions were followed by bad outcomes (even if that wasn’t caused by your action, or was you making a good bet but getting unlucky) to become visible and salient.
I think there are likely many considerations I’m missing.
I didn’t saliently notice worries or ideas about how should the community health team should handle various conflicts of interest prior to November 2022, and didn’t saliently notice the question of what to do about incidents relating to senior staff at CEA /​ EV UK /​ EV US until this morning, and of course things tend to be easier to spot in hindsight. (OTOH I just hadn’t spent much time thinking about the community health team at all, since it wasn’t very relevant to my job.)