Hi all, introducing myself here: I’m Eleri (or Elli) Thomas.
I crossed paths with early EA and 80,000 Hours while at Oxford (graduated 2012), though I haven’t been active in the community since. Since then I’ve had a rather varied, interdisciplinary career as an urbanist (trained in history, urban design and town planning, and worked across the built environment professions, economics, infrastructure, smart cities, and policy, design, development and strategy). I’ve been at think tanks (Centre for Cities), advised government/local authorities/developers (Design Council), held various leadership roles in local government, and co-founded a community-led cohousing company.
I’m now an independent consultant, researcher, facilitator and writer (currently at thinkingthingsthrough.substack.com) focused on strategic design and systems change with a focus on helping enable better collective decisions, especially in complex, fast-changing environments and where there are complex bureaucratic or regulatory contexts or legacies. I’ve worked with local and central government, a handful of forward-thinking consultancies, and various nonprofits and foundations.
Since going self-employed a year ago, I’ve had more time to write and engage with the wider field, and I’m really keen to maximise the impact of the insight that I have gained from working on the bridge between research, policy and practice. I’m particularly focussed currently on how humans (and machines) cooperate effectively, how institutions cultivate or undermine collective intelligence, and how psychological, emotional and cultural dynamics shape our capacity to understand and act well.
I’m keen to learn from and see how the EA community is thinking about policy and governance, and on AI development and alignment; here in particular my approach is likely to be more human-centred and design/innovation-oriented than the classic rationalist mindset, so I’m genuinely curious how that friction or complementarity shows up in practice.
In September–October I’ll be resident at CEEALAR in Blackpool, so taking the opportunity to re-enter the EA world here. :)
Hi all, introducing myself here: I’m Eleri (or Elli) Thomas.
I crossed paths with early EA and 80,000 Hours while at Oxford (graduated 2012), though I haven’t been active in the community since. Since then I’ve had a rather varied, interdisciplinary career as an urbanist (trained in history, urban design and town planning, and worked across the built environment professions, economics, infrastructure, smart cities, and policy, design, development and strategy). I’ve been at think tanks (Centre for Cities), advised government/local authorities/developers (Design Council), held various leadership roles in local government, and co-founded a community-led cohousing company.
I’m now an independent consultant, researcher, facilitator and writer (currently at thinkingthingsthrough.substack.com) focused on strategic design and systems change with a focus on helping enable better collective decisions, especially in complex, fast-changing environments and where there are complex bureaucratic or regulatory contexts or legacies. I’ve worked with local and central government, a handful of forward-thinking consultancies, and various nonprofits and foundations.
Since going self-employed a year ago, I’ve had more time to write and engage with the wider field, and I’m really keen to maximise the impact of the insight that I have gained from working on the bridge between research, policy and practice. I’m particularly focussed currently on how humans (and machines) cooperate effectively, how institutions cultivate or undermine collective intelligence, and how psychological, emotional and cultural dynamics shape our capacity to understand and act well.
I’m keen to learn from and see how the EA community is thinking about policy and governance, and on AI development and alignment; here in particular my approach is likely to be more human-centred and design/innovation-oriented than the classic rationalist mindset, so I’m genuinely curious how that friction or complementarity shows up in practice.
In September–October I’ll be resident at CEEALAR in Blackpool, so taking the opportunity to re-enter the EA world here. :)