Can you please elaborate on Owen’s role with CEA (and other constituent projects of EVF) prior to his joining the board in 2020?
CEA’s website suggests Owen had a fairly significant role prior to joining the board, including during the period when some of his problematic behavior (like the incident described in Time) occurred. For instance, Owen was listed on the earliest version of CEA’s Team webpage (circa early 2014) as Director of Research. He seems to have continued to work (or volunteer?) in research roles for several years. In 2018, he began being listed as an “advisor”; on the org chart he and the Executive Director were next to each other, above the rest of the organization. In 2019, CEA had a new ED, but Owen occupied the same place on the org chart. His bio on the team page noted: “Owen provides strategic and research advice for CEA, and also works with the Events, Groups, and Grants teams” (in 2018, he apparently worked more with the “individual outreach team”.)
I recognize that sometimes team webpages are not the most accurate representations of an organization’s actual structure and responsibilities. But I think it is important to establish whether Owen was a CEA employee (or highly influential volunteer) rather than just an influential member of the EA community at the time of his infractions and whether Owen’s roles at CEA materially contributed to his perceived influence in the community (see, for example, this comment thread describing the extensive discretion and influence of the individual outreach team.) This seems like important context when evaluating:
Julia’s decision making after receiving the 2021 complaint about Owen (and Toby and Nicole’s decisions after Julia informed them)
The adequacy of CEA’s policies (past and present) around acceptable employee behavior, particularly with respect to power dynamics
The degree of forthcomingness of this statement from the board and Owen’s apology
Here’s my current understanding (certainty has been more difficult to achieve than I’d like, in part because the time period of Owen’s involvement traverses a number of changes to the structure of CEA and related organisations, possible there remain errors here but have tried to be clear about my level of certainty):
Looks like in 2014 (or possibly 2013), he joined some part of the CEA legal entity, eventually working at the Global Priorities Project (which was legally part of the CEA umbrella organisation) as Director of Research. He believes he was part-time, I couldn’t confirm.
He reports he started working primarily at FHI in 2015, but may have continued to have a part-time advisory role at CEA the umbrella organisation (I couldn’t confirm).
He started working with the main part of CEA (CEA-the-project) in summer 2017, part-time (16 hours a week). His part-time contract starting then describes him as “advisor to the CEO” and reporting to the CEO
He is described by a CEA employee there at the time as being trusted to give input on many CEA teams. This involved things like participating in staff discussions on Slack and at some meetings, and giving more input on specific projects.
At least one of the incidents that led to the woman reporting to Julia (as described in Time) happened after he started working for CEA-the-project.
The advisor position is described by a few people who have a general but not super precise sense of how things were at the time as probably signifying that he was independent from the rest of CEA, given space to think about high level things, but not likely meant to imply peers with the CEO (I hope it’s clear from my hedging words that there’s uncertainty here).
Between 2017 and 2019, he was at a number of CEA team retreats and involved in conversations about CEA leadership.
In 2018 he was setting up the Research Scholars Program at FHI.
His last contract with CEA the project is March 2019, reporting directly to the board, still described as an advisor, with even more limited time (8 hours a week)
He was, as you point out, one of the people on the hiring committee for CEA’s executive director in 2019.
He stopped working at CEA-the-project July 2019, and was appointed a trustee (of EV, then called CEA) March 2020.
From descriptions by others at CEA, from 2020-2023, both in the role of trustee and more generally in the community he had big input on strategic questions and was a trusted senior advisor type; I don’t know how much weight goes on the CEA aspect versus the more general aspect.
My own interpretation is that it seems like there were two parallel tracks:
Owen was doing work for Global Priorities Project, then moving to FHI, then setting up the Research Scholars Program, and ongoingly doing his own work / research
People running or high up in CEA trusted Owen quite a bit on strategic questions, and he was given roles that let him give thoughts and strategic input on CEA activity. Starting at least in 2017, he was involved in or spearheaded at least some CEA projects and was involved in important conversations about leadership at CEA. I don’t know how much advising he did beyond that, could have been a lot or a little, but was in a position where his views were given a good amount of weight.
In terms of evaluation, as you mention in your original comment, I do think things in this category will be inputs to both our internal Community Health review and the external investigation occurring.
Thank you for pulling this together Chana, I really appreciate it! I found your list very informative, and expect the internal and external reviewers will as well.
FWIW, this makes me view Owen’s statement/apology, which makes no mention of his role and associated influence at CEA, considerably more negatively. The following statements seem particularly incomplete/misleading :
I was employed as a researcher at that time. My role didn’t develop to connecting people with different positions until later, and this wasn’t part of my self-conception at the time… I in fact had significant amounts of power. This was not very salient to me but very salient to her… I was aware that hard power (like employer relationships or grantmaking) mattered, but I was pretty blind to the implications of the soft power that came from being older and more central in the community.
[Sorry for delay, there were a number of retreats / conferences recently]. Looking into this atm, hoping to know better what the timeline is going to be on getting this info (some people who know more than me have some out of office time) by the end of this week, will update then on timeline for getting a comment written, feel free to ping me if I haven’t.
Edit March 10: Still waiting to get records and info back. Will come back to this in a week if I haven’t updated by then.
Thanks for providing status updates on this Chana!
I saw a comment on another thread that raised questions for me about another specific aspect of Owen’s historical role at CEA. Jonas Vollmer wrote “Nick (together with Owen) did a pretty good job turning CEA from a highly dysfunctional into a functional organization during CEA’s leadership change in 2018/2019.”
I’m not sure if Jonas’ impression is accurate, and if so whether he’s referring to Owen’s role on the selection committee that picked Max as Executive Director or if there was involvement beyond that. So I hope the information you’re collecting will be able to address that.
Can you please elaborate on Owen’s role with CEA (and other constituent projects of EVF) prior to his joining the board in 2020?
CEA’s website suggests Owen had a fairly significant role prior to joining the board, including during the period when some of his problematic behavior (like the incident described in Time) occurred. For instance, Owen was listed on the earliest version of CEA’s Team webpage (circa early 2014) as Director of Research. He seems to have continued to work (or volunteer?) in research roles for several years. In 2018, he began being listed as an “advisor”; on the org chart he and the Executive Director were next to each other, above the rest of the organization. In 2019, CEA had a new ED, but Owen occupied the same place on the org chart. His bio on the team page noted: “Owen provides strategic and research advice for CEA, and also works with the Events, Groups, and Grants teams” (in 2018, he apparently worked more with the “individual outreach team”.)
I recognize that sometimes team webpages are not the most accurate representations of an organization’s actual structure and responsibilities. But I think it is important to establish whether Owen was a CEA employee (or highly influential volunteer) rather than just an influential member of the EA community at the time of his infractions and whether Owen’s roles at CEA materially contributed to his perceived influence in the community (see, for example, this comment thread describing the extensive discretion and influence of the individual outreach team.) This seems like important context when evaluating:
Julia’s decision making after receiving the 2021 complaint about Owen (and Toby and Nicole’s decisions after Julia informed them)
The adequacy of CEA’s policies (past and present) around acceptable employee behavior, particularly with respect to power dynamics
The degree of forthcomingness of this statement from the board and Owen’s apology
Here’s my current understanding (certainty has been more difficult to achieve than I’d like, in part because the time period of Owen’s involvement traverses a number of changes to the structure of CEA and related organisations, possible there remain errors here but have tried to be clear about my level of certainty):
Looks like in 2014 (or possibly 2013), he joined some part of the CEA legal entity, eventually working at the Global Priorities Project (which was legally part of the CEA umbrella organisation) as Director of Research. He believes he was part-time, I couldn’t confirm.
The Global Priorities Project was split between FHI and CEA, but he was on the CEA side.
He reports he started working primarily at FHI in 2015, but may have continued to have a part-time advisory role at CEA the umbrella organisation (I couldn’t confirm).
He started working with the main part of CEA (CEA-the-project) in summer 2017, part-time (16 hours a week). His part-time contract starting then describes him as “advisor to the CEO” and reporting to the CEO
He is described by a CEA employee there at the time as being trusted to give input on many CEA teams. This involved things like participating in staff discussions on Slack and at some meetings, and giving more input on specific projects.
At least one of the incidents that led to the woman reporting to Julia (as described in Time) happened after he started working for CEA-the-project.
The advisor position is described by a few people who have a general but not super precise sense of how things were at the time as probably signifying that he was independent from the rest of CEA, given space to think about high level things, but not likely meant to imply peers with the CEO (I hope it’s clear from my hedging words that there’s uncertainty here).
Between 2017 and 2019, he was at a number of CEA team retreats and involved in conversations about CEA leadership.
In 2018 he was setting up the Research Scholars Program at FHI.
His last contract with CEA the project is March 2019, reporting directly to the board, still described as an advisor, with even more limited time (8 hours a week)
He was, as you point out, one of the people on the hiring committee for CEA’s executive director in 2019.
He stopped working at CEA-the-project July 2019, and was appointed a trustee (of EV, then called CEA) March 2020.
From descriptions by others at CEA, from 2020-2023, both in the role of trustee and more generally in the community he had big input on strategic questions and was a trusted senior advisor type; I don’t know how much weight goes on the CEA aspect versus the more general aspect.
My own interpretation is that it seems like there were two parallel tracks:
Owen was doing work for Global Priorities Project, then moving to FHI, then setting up the Research Scholars Program, and ongoingly doing his own work / research
People running or high up in CEA trusted Owen quite a bit on strategic questions, and he was given roles that let him give thoughts and strategic input on CEA activity. Starting at least in 2017, he was involved in or spearheaded at least some CEA projects and was involved in important conversations about leadership at CEA. I don’t know how much advising he did beyond that, could have been a lot or a little, but was in a position where his views were given a good amount of weight.
In terms of evaluation, as you mention in your original comment, I do think things in this category will be inputs to both our internal Community Health review and the external investigation occurring.
Thank you for pulling this together Chana, I really appreciate it! I found your list very informative, and expect the internal and external reviewers will as well.
FWIW, this makes me view Owen’s statement/apology, which makes no mention of his role and associated influence at CEA, considerably more negatively. The following statements seem particularly incomplete/misleading :
[Sorry for delay, there were a number of retreats / conferences recently]. Looking into this atm, hoping to know better what the timeline is going to be on getting this info (some people who know more than me have some out of office time) by the end of this week, will update then on timeline for getting a comment written, feel free to ping me if I haven’t.
Edit March 10: Still waiting to get records and info back. Will come back to this in a week if I haven’t updated by then.
Relevant comment now here.
Thanks for providing status updates on this Chana!
I saw a comment on another thread that raised questions for me about another specific aspect of Owen’s historical role at CEA. Jonas Vollmer wrote “Nick (together with Owen) did a pretty good job turning CEA from a highly dysfunctional into a functional organization during CEA’s leadership change in 2018/2019.”
I’m not sure if Jonas’ impression is accurate, and if so whether he’s referring to Owen’s role on the selection committee that picked Max as Executive Director or if there was involvement beyond that. So I hope the information you’re collecting will be able to address that.