Hi everyone! I’m a longtime EA but I haven’t spent much time on the EA Forum, so taking this opportunity to introduce myself.
Professionally, I’m an economist in California focused on tax and benefit policy. I’m the co-founder and CEO of PolicyEngine, a tech nonprofit whose product lets anyone reform the tax and benefit system and see the quantified impact on society and one’s own household (we’re live in the UK and working on a US model). I’m also the founder and president of the UBI Center, a think tank researching universal basic income policies. Outside of work, I’m a founding lead of Ventura County YIMBY, which advocates housing density, and I lead the Ventura chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which advocates carbon dividends.
I previously spent most of my career as a data scientist at Google, where I first encountered EA when Google.org gave a grant to GiveDirectly in 2012. I then became active in Google’s internal EA group, left Google in 2018, took the GWWC pledge in 2019 (which I wrote about here), and got a Master’s in Development Economics from MIT in 2020, where I became involved in the MIT EA community. I give primarily to GiveDirectly and GiveWell, though as an avid listener of the 80k Hours podcast (and soon-to-be-avid reader of the EA Forum!) I’m always interested in new cause areas.
I’m also working on a post on tax and benefit policy as an EA cause area, so I’m open to ideas here on that topic.
Hi everyone! I’m a longtime EA but I haven’t spent much time on the EA Forum, so taking this opportunity to introduce myself.
Professionally, I’m an economist in California focused on tax and benefit policy. I’m the co-founder and CEO of PolicyEngine, a tech nonprofit whose product lets anyone reform the tax and benefit system and see the quantified impact on society and one’s own household (we’re live in the UK and working on a US model). I’m also the founder and president of the UBI Center, a think tank researching universal basic income policies. Outside of work, I’m a founding lead of Ventura County YIMBY, which advocates housing density, and I lead the Ventura chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which advocates carbon dividends.
I previously spent most of my career as a data scientist at Google, where I first encountered EA when Google.org gave a grant to GiveDirectly in 2012. I then became active in Google’s internal EA group, left Google in 2018, took the GWWC pledge in 2019 (which I wrote about here), and got a Master’s in Development Economics from MIT in 2020, where I became involved in the MIT EA community. I give primarily to GiveDirectly and GiveWell, though as an avid listener of the 80k Hours podcast (and soon-to-be-avid reader of the EA Forum!) I’m always interested in new cause areas.
I’m also working on a post on tax and benefit policy as an EA cause area, so I’m open to ideas here on that topic.
Welcome, Max! I’ve been following you on Twitter for a long time, and I’m excited to see you on the site I help to run :-)
If you want feedback before you publish your post, I offer that to everyone (though it’s totally optional).