Carreras con Impacto: Outreach Results Among Latin American Students
Overview
At Carreras con Impacto (CCI), we are dedicated to identifying and engaging high-potential students across Latin America, equipping them with the knowledge, tools, and mentorship needed to pursue careers focused on catastrophic and existential risks. Our programs empower students to make a significant impact in areas such as AI risk reduction, biosecurity, and global catastrophic risks, aligning their career paths with the most pressing global challenges.
Program Phases
Virtual Programs (Phase 1):
8-hour Introductory Course: Focused on maximizing career impact in the General Global Priority Problems.
16-hour Advanced Course: Delivered over 8 weeks, this course covers theoretical concepts, case studies, and practical exercises related to Global Catastrophic Risks (GCRs).
Highlights (Virtual Programs):
Applications Received: 1,449
Accepted Applications: 351
Program Completion Rate: 67.23%
Likelihood to Recommend: 9.4
Mentorship Program (Phase 2):
After the first phase, the students could send a project proposal. A 14-week personalized mentorship initiative where selected students from Phase 1 develop specific projects, such as policy proposals or research papers, within an organized mentoring program.
Highlights (First Cohort):
Project Proposals Received: 62
Accepted Projects: 10
Mentorship Areas: Artificial Intelligence (3), Biosecurity (2), Communication (3), Cause Prioritization (1), Nuclear Weapons (1)
Support Network: 35 organizations and individuals
Impact Evaluation Score: 9⁄10
Likelihood to Recommend: 9.2
Counterfactual:
63.6% of the mentee’s wouldn’t have learned about Cause Prioritization and/or Global Catastrophic Risks.
72.7% of the mentees would not carry out their individual project if it wasn’t for Carreras con Impacto.
Community Health Evaluation
Mentees were asked to rate the level el agreement from 1 to 10 to a series of sentences intended to evaluate the Community Health Status of Carreras con Impacto. Overall, we received a Perfect Score 10⁄10.
“Carreras con Impacto is a place where I could express my opinion freely”
“Carreras con Impacto is a place where I felt safe and respected”
“Carreras con Impacto responded efficiently to my questions and concerns“
“Carreras con Impacto is an organization committed to continuous improvement”
“My facilitators/mentors reflect the values of Carreras con Impacto as an organization.”
Mentorship Project Results
After 14 weeks with a minimum commitment of 10 hours per week, the students work from the definition of the question to a specific product and a report. The following projects are published on this forum and in both English and Spanish on our webpage:
Biosafety and Biosecurity:
Development of an Epidemiologic Library – Lilith Jaquelín Díaz Reyes
Alumni Highlight:
Her project has garnered interest from biosecurity networks in Latin America.
High-Throughput Sequencing on the Prevention and Detection of Pandemic Pathogens in LatAM and the Caribbean – Gabriela Stefany Paredes Villafuerte
Alumni Highlight:
Gabriela has been accepted, with the support of CCI, into the course “Genomics & Epidemiological Surveillance of Bacterial Pathogens—Latin America and the Caribbean” in Costa Rica. Additionally, her project has garnered interest from biosecurity networks in Latin America and will be published as a Review on a Scientific Journal.
Nuclear Conflicts:
Exploring the Consequences of Russia’s Absence from the START III Treaty for Strategic Arms Reduction – Ashley Valentina Marte
Alumni Highlight:
Ashley has been accepted into the next cohort of the Global Challenge Project.
Global Development:
ProteinAid Bihar: Sustainable Nutritional Strategy for Children Under 5 Years Old– María José Guevara
Alumni Highlight:
María has been connected and recommended by international NGOs to continue conducting research on similar fields.
Artificial Intelligence:
Artificial Intelligence and Biometric Data Protection in Latin America: Lessons from the European Union – Ana Sofía Jimenez
Open-Source Replication of Decomposition of Language Models with Dictionary Learning – (Post in progress) Fernando Avalos
Alumni Highlight:
Fernando has been accepted into the ML4Good program and is Co-founder of the AI Safety Initiative Colombia.
Bridging the Compute Divide: Evaluating NAIRR’s Role in Democratizing AI Research and Development – (Post in progress) Jose Gelvez
Alumni Highlight:
Jose is a Co-founder of the AI Safety Initiative Colombia.
Communication:
Social media content generation for raising global causes awareness
– Eimy Lorena Fernández Montoya
Podcast “Guardianes de Derecho”: Explorando los Riesgos Catastróficos Globales – Alba del Valle Moreno Salazar
Alumni Highlight:
Alba has decided to pursue a degree in International Law after working on a project researching these topics as they relate to Global Catastrophic Risks (GCRs) for her podcast. Additionally, she will continue hosting her podcast.
Un Viaje a Través del Virus: Miniserie de Concientización Pandémica – Gabriela Yuliet Rodríguez Valero
It makes me really happy to see this kind of mentorship/training/guidance for people in Latin America. I love seeing efforts to get a wide range of people introduced to EA-type ideas and principles. Thank you for putting in the effort to make this happen.
Are there plans for this to continue, maybe hosting new cohorts of students every few months?
Hello Joseph!
Thank you so much for your comments, we are happy to see our mentees thriving through these opportunities. Although GCR’s and EA-Related principles have been introduced before in the LATAM community, it still represents a challenge for early-career individuals looking to pursue an impactful career. Bridging this gap is not only one of our goals as an organization, but also to provide a “box of tools and knowledge” to tackle any pressing global challenges that may incur in the future. Something worth noting, is that most of the applications we received for our programs were from people outside the EA circle, meaning that another added value to our programs is the ability to reach out to promising people who otherwise wouldn’t have known about these topics nor carried out their projects/explored these areas. As our counterfactual evaluation states: “63.6% of the mentees wouldn’t have learned about Cause Prioritization and/or Global Catastrophic Risks” (if it wasn’t for CCI).
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Answering your question:
At this moment, we are still running the second cohort of this first iteration of the mentorship program. We expect to share the results of this second cohort in ~one month from now.
We’d like to extend you an invitation to the next “Final Projects Presentation Event” on September 14th at 9 am (Mexico City Time). Most of the presentations will be held in Spanish, but some mentees prefer to present in English to increase their reach.
You can register for the event in the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rd-2gqzkoGN3v0Sqa1m9TpMwQlJq5wVZs
As for further plans, we are seeking funding to continue running operations over the next year. The plan is to run an improved version of the virtual programs, to run another iteration of this mentorship program and launch a novel “Research Training Program” in collaboration with the UNAM. We are most excited about the last one as we expect to foster a higher-level quality of projects and achieve more specialized deliverables, especially for Technical/Research projects related to Bio and AI.
Congratulations on achieving some very impressive results with Carreras con Impacto, and with great female representation too! It would be interesting to read a follow-up report in 6-12 months to see what the more long-term impact of the program has been.
Keep up the great work! :)
Hello Mel!
Thank you, we believe sharing our results is not only a way to share with the community our efforts, but also serves as an incentive for the mentees to keep up the good work.
As I replied to Joseph, we are still running the second cohort of this first iteration of the mentorship program. We expect to share the results of this second cohort in ~one month from now, so you’ll be hearing (or reading) from us sooner rather than later.
Please, feel free to join us to our next “Final Projects Presentation Event” on September 14th at 9 am (Mexico City Time), we’d be happy to see you there.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rd-2gqzkoGN3v0Sqa1m9TpMwQlJq5wVZs