This doesn’t really match my (relatively little) experience. I think it might be because we disagree on what counts as “EA Leadership”: we probably have a different idea of what counts as “EA” and/or we have a different idea of what counts as “Leadership”.
I think you might be considering as “EA leadership” senior people working in “meta-EA” orgs (e.g. CEA) and “only-EA experience” to also include people doing more direct work (e.g. GiveWell). So the CEO of OpenPhilanthropy would count as profile #1 having mostly previous experience at OpenPhilanthropy and GiveWell, but the CEO of GiveWell wouldn’t count as profile #2 because they’re not in an “EA leadership position”. Is that correct?
most importantly, I want feedback on whether people think this is a thing, and if it is a thing, is it bad.
I think the easiest way would be to compile a list of people in leadership positions and check their LinkedIn profiles.
Working on the assumption above for what you mean by “EA Leadership”, while there is no canonical list of “meta-EA leaders”, a non-random sample could be this public list of some Meta Coordination Forum participants.[1]
Here’s a quick (and inaccurate) short summary of what they show on LinkedIn before their roles:[2]
Edit: this is getting a lot of votes, I want to really highlight that this is not how I would compile a list of “EA Leadership”.[3]
CEO of Open Philanthropy since 2023: 6 years at OpenPhilanthropy before becoming co-CEO, 3 years as a research analyst at GiveWell
CEA Head of Events since 2015: 2 years as “plaintiff’s attorney in Federal Court” at a non-EA org, 3 years at MIRI, and lots of things before
Website Director at 80,000 Hours since 2021: 1 year as research analyst at 80k, 5 years of PhD + University Lecturer, 2 years as content editor for a professor
CEO at Clinton Health Access Initiative since 2022: 2 years as Managing Director of GiveWell, 8 years as CEO at IDinsight, 2 years at the world bank, 1 year as Project Coordinator at J-PAL
Project Lead at EA Funds since 2022: 5 months research assistant at GPI, 4 months contractor at CEA, 1 year director at EA London, 1 year founder of a Charity Entrepreneurship charity
Community Health Analyst at CEA since 2022: 9 years mathematics teacher at three schools, 2 months instructor at two rationality camps
Co-Founder at BlueDot Impact since 2022: 3 years founder of Biosecurity Fundamentals/AI Safety Fundamentals/Existential Risk Alliance, 3 years Officer Cadet in the Royal Air Force, 7 years actor in a soap opera
Executive Director at Atlas Fellowship since 2022: 2 years executive director at EA Funds, 7 years co-founder at Center on Long-term Risk, in parallel 4 years board member at Polaris Ventures/Center for Emerging Risk Research
Community Liaison at CEA since 2015: 4 years as mental health clinician, 1 year as social work intern, 2 years donor services administrative assistant at Oxfam
Previous ED of CEA since 2019: 2 years at CEA, 4 months researcher at GWWC, 2 months researcher at FHI
Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy since 2022: 1 year chief of staff at Forethought Foundation, 3 years at FHI, 2 years executive director at Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus, 1 year vice president at Etudes Sans Frontières
Director of One-on-One Programme at 80k since 2022: 4 years at 80k, 2 years head of research operations at GPI, 4 years ED at GWWC, 4 years PhD in Philosophy of which 2 as director of operations at CEA
AI Safety and governance consultant since 2022: 1 year at Future Fund, 7 years at Open Philanthropy, 2 years at FHI, 5 years PhD in Philosophy
CEO of 80k since 2024: 6 years at 80k, 2 years assistant director at FHI, 4 years Co-founder and Director of Special Projects at CEA, 1 year Climate Science Advisor for the Office of the President of the Maldives, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics, 2 years Executive Director at a climate change policy analysis group
CEO of Lightcone since 2021: 5 years project lead on LessWrong, 1 year director of strategy at CEA, 3 years co-founder and head of design at (I think) a web agency, 1 year internships at Leverage/CFAR/MIRI
CEO of Effective Ventures since 2023: 4 years at CEA, 5 years Engagement Manager at McKinsey, 3 years Technology Consultant at Deloitte, 1 year Graduate Engineer at EDF Energy
Director of Research at Giving What We Can since 2022: 4 years researcher at founders pledge, 1 year cofounder and director of EA Netherands, 2 years supporting UBI experiments
Cofounder of CEA/GWWC/80k since 2009: (in parallel) 6 years research fellow at GPI, (in parallel) 9 years associate professor at Oxford, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in Philosophy
CEO of CEA since 2024: 1 year CEO of EV, 3 years chief of staff/program officer/fellow at Open Philanthropy, 1 year director of product and strategy at a market research consultancy firm, 2 years associate consultant at Bain, 1 year as cowboy at a college, 1 year Interim Kitchen Manager/Butcher/Head Cook at a boarding house
I think that even in this highly biased sample there are plenty of examples of Profile #2, a quick count is 50%. Did you have a different reference class in mind?
1. Were invited and planned to attend a top “meta meta-EA” event. 2. Decided to have their name public (12 people out of 43 did not disclose their intention to attend)
I think this skews heavily in favour of #1, people less professionally close to EA are probably more likely to opt-out, and to not care as much about “meta meta” things even if they were invited.
Also note, from the original post:
This is not a canonical list of “key people working in meta EA” or “EA leaders.” There are plenty of people who are not attending this event who are doing high-value work in the meta-EA space. We’ve invited people for a variety of reasons: some because they are leaders of meta EA orgs or run teams within those orgs and so have significant decision-making power or strategic influence, and others because they have expertise or work for an organization that we think it could be valuable to learn from or cooperate with.
This was compiled very quickly, there will be errors. Apologies to the people mentioned, this is only meant to be a quick overview.
Also note that different people spend very different amounts of time polishing their LinkedIn profile, things are self-reported and not verified, and some might not mention their “real world” experiences or some “EA” experiences.
Lorenzo, I want to applaud you for actually gathering some data. As I was reading this post I thought to myself “this is provable, we could just do a low-fidelity, quick-and-dirty test by looking at some LinkedIn profiles of anyone with a job title of something like Manager or Director at a sample of EA orgs.” And lo and behold, the first comment I see if a beautifully done, quick gathering of data. Bravo!
However, I think some of your categorisations are quite debatable. I wouldn’t give much weight to experience that has been gained part-time alongside studies. This means I would probably categorise numbers 2 and 11 differently, and I suspect a couple more.
I agree many of these were judgment calls, in both directions. Feels weird to mark people as having less “real world work experience” because they were studying while working instead of just working, but might be a good proxy for the work not being full-time.
For 2 I left out a ton of things that I didn’t know how to summarize in the summary, I think it’s more profile #2 than profile #1. I guess it might depend on whether “Personalized Medicine LLC” is another name for “MetaMed”, or they were two different companies. (Edit: it probably shouldn’t count, I guess only the 2 years before their last role count, will tentatively change it as closer to profile #1)
For 11 idk how to consider the experience as teenage actor and as Officer Cadet at the air force. maybe it’s a 10 hour a week kind of thing and shouldn’t count, I honestly have no idea
Just to be clear, my conception of Type 2 is that they’re still involved in EA (e.g. through ETG, volunteering, meetups), but their job isn’t, for some period of time.
Which is partly why I think 25%/75% is better than 50⁄50
If RAF cadets work like USAF cadets it means they went to college at some kind of military academy and were essentially full time plus in military training alongside school.
I feel icky spending this much time discussing the CVs of people I’ve never met (if the people concerned see this and feel weird I’m sorry!). That being said, I think what we’re talking about here is quite different from the USAF cadets. I remember attending a recruitment event for a similar scheme run by the British Army and, if I recall correctly, it’s basically a fun uni club thing the various forces offer to recruit uni grads. A weekly training night, some socials, some adventurous trips, etc. You can check the official website here.
This doesn’t really match my (relatively little) experience. I think it might be because we disagree on what counts as “EA Leadership”: we probably have a different idea of what counts as “EA” and/or we have a different idea of what counts as “Leadership”.
I think you might be considering as “EA leadership” senior people working in “meta-EA” orgs (e.g. CEA) and “only-EA experience” to also include people doing more direct work (e.g. GiveWell). So the CEO of OpenPhilanthropy would count as profile #1 having mostly previous experience at OpenPhilanthropy and GiveWell, but the CEO of GiveWell wouldn’t count as profile #2 because they’re not in an “EA leadership position”. Is that correct?
I think the easiest way would be to compile a list of people in leadership positions and check their LinkedIn profiles.
Working on the assumption above for what you mean by “EA Leadership”, while there is no canonical list of “meta-EA leaders”, a non-random sample could be this public list of some Meta Coordination Forum participants.[1]
Here’s a quick (and inaccurate) short summary of what they show on LinkedIn before their roles:[2]
Edit: this is getting a lot of votes, I want to really highlight that this is not how I would compile a list of “EA Leadership”.[3]
CEO of Open Philanthropy since 2023: 6 years at OpenPhilanthropy before becoming co-CEO, 3 years as a research analyst at GiveWell
CEA Head of Events since 2015: 2 years as “plaintiff’s attorney in Federal Court” at a non-EA org, 3 years at MIRI, and lots of things before
Managing Director/co-founder at Effektiv Spenden since 2022: 3 years as Associate Director of a non-EA org, 5 years as Project Leader and Program Manager at non-EA orgs, 9 Years at BCG, …
Website Director at 80,000 Hours since 2021: 1 year as research analyst at 80k, 5 years of PhD + University Lecturer, 2 years as content editor for a professor
Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy since 2018: 3 years analyst at J.P. Morgan, 3 years D.Phil. at Oxford
Division Manager at The Centre for Effective Altruism since 2020: 2 years at CEA, 1 year founding and selling a startup, 7 months recruiting at Ought (EA AI Safety org), 4 years founding and selling another startup, 8 years R&D Team Lead at Epic
CEO at Clinton Health Access Initiative since 2022: 2 years as Managing Director of GiveWell, 8 years as CEO at IDinsight, 2 years at the world bank, 1 year as Project Coordinator at J-PAL
Project Lead at EA Funds since 2022: 5 months research assistant at GPI, 4 months contractor at CEA, 1 year director at EA London, 1 year founder of a Charity Entrepreneurship charity
Community Health Analyst at CEA since 2022: 9 years mathematics teacher at three schools, 2 months instructor at two rationality camps
Program Director at Open Philanthropy since 2023: 8 years at Open Philanthropy
Co-Founder at BlueDot Impact since 2022: 3 years founder of Biosecurity Fundamentals/AI Safety Fundamentals/Existential Risk Alliance, 3 years Officer Cadet in the Royal Air Force, 7 years actor in a soap opera
Senior Program Officer at Open Philanthropy since 2022: 5 years at GiveWell, 1 year at CEA, 4 years at L.E.K. Consulting.
AI Alignment Researcher at Charles University since 2022: I assume they don’t count as “Leader” according to your classification
Co-founder at Charity Entrepreneurship/AIM since 2018: 2 years co-founder of Charity Science Health, 3 years co-founder of Charity Science
Executive Director at Atlas Fellowship since 2022: 2 years executive director at EA Funds, 7 years co-founder at Center on Long-term Risk, in parallel 4 years board member at Polaris Ventures/Center for Emerging Risk Research
Community Liaison at CEA since 2015: 4 years as mental health clinician, 1 year as social work intern, 2 years donor services administrative assistant at Oxfam
Co-Founder at Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative since 2022: 2 years program director at Stanford Existential Risks Initiative, ~2 years of research roles while in university
Farm Animal Welfare Program Officer at Open Philanthropy since 2015: 2 years as policy advisor and litigation fellow at The Humane Society of the United States, 3 years of J.D. Law, 1 year associate consultant at Bain
Board member and trustee of Effective Ventures: 10 years founder of Sendwave and Wave, 2 years engineer at a videogame company, 1 year cofounder at a startup
Previous ED of CEA since 2019: 2 years at CEA, 4 months researcher at GWWC, 2 months researcher at FHI
Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy since 2022: 1 year chief of staff at Forethought Foundation, 3 years at FHI, 2 years executive director at Stiftung für Effektiven Altruismus, 1 year vice president at Etudes Sans Frontières
Director of One-on-One Programme at 80k since 2022: 4 years at 80k, 2 years head of research operations at GPI, 4 years ED at GWWC, 4 years PhD in Philosophy of which 2 as director of operations at CEA
AI Safety and governance consultant since 2022: 1 year at Future Fund, 7 years at Open Philanthropy, 2 years at FHI, 5 years PhD in Philosophy
Head of Community Health and Special Projects at CEA since 2021: 3 years at CEA, 3 years research analyst at Open Philanthropy, 6 months staff assistant at a hospital
CEO of 80k since 2024: 6 years at 80k, 2 years assistant director at FHI, 4 years Co-founder and Director of Special Projects at CEA, 1 year
Climate Science Advisor for the Office of the President of the Maldives, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics, 2 years Executive Director at a climate change policy analysis group
CEO of Lightcone since 2021: 5 years project lead on LessWrong, 1 year director of strategy at CEA, 3 years co-founder and head of design at (I think) a web agency, 1 year internships at Leverage/CFAR/MIRI
CEO of Effective Ventures since 2023: 4 years at CEA, 5 years Engagement Manager at McKinsey, 3 years Technology Consultant at Deloitte, 1 year Graduate Engineer at EDF Energy
CEO of Longview Philanthropy since 2022: 3 years at Longview, 4 years at Goldman Sachs, 2 years teacher of mathematics
Director of Research at Giving What We Can since 2022: 4 years researcher at founders pledge, 1 year cofounder and director of EA Netherands, 2 years supporting UBI experiments
Cofounder of CEA/GWWC/80k since 2009: (in parallel) 6 years research fellow at GPI, (in parallel) 9 years associate professor at Oxford, (in parallel) 4 years PhD in Philosophy
CEO of CEA since 2024: 1 year CEO of EV, 3 years chief of staff/program officer/fellow at Open Philanthropy, 1 year director of product and strategy at a market research consultancy firm, 2 years associate consultant at Bain, 1 year as cowboy at a college, 1 year Interim Kitchen Manager/Butcher/Head Cook at a boarding house
I think that even in this highly biased sample there are plenty of examples of Profile #2, a quick count is 50%. Did you have a different reference class in mind?
Note that this is a list of people who:
1. Were invited and planned to attend a top “meta meta-EA” event.
2. Decided to have their name public (12 people out of 43 did not disclose their intention to attend)
I think this skews heavily in favour of #1, people less professionally close to EA are probably more likely to opt-out, and to not care as much about “meta meta” things even if they were invited.
Also note, from the original post:
This was compiled very quickly, there will be errors. Apologies to the people mentioned, this is only meant to be a quick overview.
Also note that different people spend very different amounts of time polishing their LinkedIn profile, things are self-reported and not verified, and some might not mention their “real world” experiences or some “EA” experiences.
E.g. I would include senior people at GiveWell’s top charities (where most of the money goes) and at GiveWell itself
Lorenzo, I want to applaud you for actually gathering some data. As I was reading this post I thought to myself “this is provable, we could just do a low-fidelity, quick-and-dirty test by looking at some LinkedIn profiles of anyone with a job title of something like Manager or Director at a sample of EA orgs.” And lo and behold, the first comment I see if a beautifully done, quick gathering of data. Bravo!
I love that you actually did this Lorenzo!
However, I think some of your categorisations are quite debatable. I wouldn’t give much weight to experience that has been gained part-time alongside studies. This means I would probably categorise numbers 2 and 11 differently, and I suspect a couple more.
I agree many of these were judgment calls, in both directions. Feels weird to mark people as having less “real world work experience” because they were studying while working instead of just working, but might be a good proxy for the work not being full-time.
For 2 I left out a ton of things that I didn’t know how to summarize in the summary, I think it’s more profile #2 than profile #1. I guess it might depend on whether “Personalized Medicine LLC” is another name for “MetaMed”, or they were two different companies. (Edit: it probably shouldn’t count, I guess only the 2 years before their last role count, will tentatively change it as closer to profile #1)
For 11 idk how to consider the experience as teenage actor and as Officer Cadet at the air force. maybe it’s a 10 hour a week kind of thing and shouldn’t count, I honestly have no idea
Just to be clear, my conception of Type 2 is that they’re still involved in EA (e.g. through ETG, volunteering, meetups), but their job isn’t, for some period of time.
Which is partly why I think 25%/75% is better than 50⁄50
If RAF cadets work like USAF cadets it means they went to college at some kind of military academy and were essentially full time plus in military training alongside school.
I feel icky spending this much time discussing the CVs of people I’ve never met (if the people concerned see this and feel weird I’m sorry!). That being said, I think what we’re talking about here is quite different from the USAF cadets. I remember attending a recruitment event for a similar scheme run by the British Army and, if I recall correctly, it’s basically a fun uni club thing the various forces offer to recruit uni grads. A weekly training night, some socials, some adventurous trips, etc. You can check the official website here.
I’ll try and loop back to your reply when I’m less exhausted (having a two year old is quite the thing). But off the top of my head:
1. bloody well done for going the extra mile on this ❤️
2. if you’re right about the 50%, that worries me. I was hoping for something more like 30%/ 70%. This is serious diversity problem IMO.