I’d like for Marisa to be remembered for all the many ways she contributed to the EA Community, and the causes we all care about.
She contributed in so many ways, that I know I’m going to miss a bunch of things. I guess that was one striking feature of Marisa – she saw things that needed to be done, or heard people’s requests for help or advice, and she didn’t hesitate to leap in to help. In particular, she did an impressive amount to help us be a welcoming, inclusive and supportive community for newcomers to EA and to people of backgrounds underrepresented in EA.
I think she really embodied the EA principles. Many of the things she did were unpaid, unglamorous, and sometimes tedious. But she took on all these tasks with eagerness because they were important and needed doing.
This is certainly not a full list—please feel free to add more information if you know it.
In her early EA days (2017) Marisa volunteered at Rethink Charity, helping out across a number of Rethink Charity projects, and was hired part time to work on operations. We could throw her a wide variety of problems and could deeply trust that she’d somehow manage to work them all out.
During this time she studied Sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans (with a semester in Ghana), and wrote an undergrad thesis on Value Drift in EA. This was shared and discussed a bunch over the years and was awarded an EA Forum prize. She also spent some time during this period in Uganda, volunteering at an agricultural development charity.
When she finished her degree, she worked full time at Rethink Charity – keeping the org running smoothly; helping run RC Forward, a charity that allows Canadian donors to donate to the world’s most effective charities; and Giving Tuesday coordination, among other things.
Alongside her work she helped coordinate ops information sharing through Ops Slack, offered her time readily to have calls and EAG meetings with community members interested in working in ops.
She helped run a bunch of online things during Covid, including the EA Student Summit (a 2 day online conference during Covid), and EAGxAsia-Pacific.
With SamiM, she started EA Anywhere, a virtual group for people who don’t live near or can’t attend local EA group meetups. She mostly ran this in her free time – running online meetups, having 1:1s with folks new to EA, and coordinating the other EA Anywhere volunteers. She secured funding in order to hire a new full time community organiser (Sasha) so she could work on other things.
On the back of her experience with EA Anywhere, she worked part time for several months with me on the CEA Groups team, creating resources for EA Groups and writing the monthly EA Groups Newsletter.
In the last few years Marisa studied for a Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University in DC, while also
To expand on what is written here about Marisa’s role with ALLFED, I would like to add that when Marisa volunteered with us a few years ago, she contributed in several meaningful ways. She was actively engaged in our work exploring the intersection of catastrophic risk, social sciences, and humanities. Marisa also provided invaluable feedback on how we could improve our volunteer program at the time. Her thoughtful suggestions were incredibly helpful and demonstrated just how much she cared. I remember our calls being filled with a lot of joy, laughter, and the desire to do good.
I’d like for Marisa to be remembered for all the many ways she contributed to the EA Community, and the causes we all care about.
She contributed in so many ways, that I know I’m going to miss a bunch of things. I guess that was one striking feature of Marisa – she saw things that needed to be done, or heard people’s requests for help or advice, and she didn’t hesitate to leap in to help. In particular, she did an impressive amount to help us be a welcoming, inclusive and supportive community for newcomers to EA and to people of backgrounds underrepresented in EA.
I think she really embodied the EA principles. Many of the things she did were unpaid, unglamorous, and sometimes tedious. But she took on all these tasks with eagerness because they were important and needed doing.
This is certainly not a full list—please feel free to add more information if you know it.
In her early EA days (2017) Marisa volunteered at Rethink Charity, helping out across a number of Rethink Charity projects, and was hired part time to work on operations. We could throw her a wide variety of problems and could deeply trust that she’d somehow manage to work them all out.
During this time she studied Sociology at Loyola University in New Orleans (with a semester in Ghana), and wrote an undergrad thesis on Value Drift in EA. This was shared and discussed a bunch over the years and was awarded an EA Forum prize. She also spent some time during this period in Uganda, volunteering at an agricultural development charity.
When she finished her degree, she worked full time at Rethink Charity – keeping the org running smoothly; helping run RC Forward, a charity that allows Canadian donors to donate to the world’s most effective charities; and Giving Tuesday coordination, among other things.
Alongside her work she helped coordinate ops information sharing through Ops Slack, offered her time readily to have calls and EAG meetings with community members interested in working in ops.
She helped run a bunch of online things during Covid, including the EA Student Summit (a 2 day online conference during Covid), and EAGxAsia-Pacific.
She volunteered for ALLFED doing operations work.
With SamiM, she started EA Anywhere, a virtual group for people who don’t live near or can’t attend local EA group meetups. She mostly ran this in her free time – running online meetups, having 1:1s with folks new to EA, and coordinating the other EA Anywhere volunteers. She secured funding in order to hire a new full time community organiser (Sasha) so she could work on other things.
On the back of her experience with EA Anywhere, she worked part time for several months with me on the CEA Groups team, creating resources for EA Groups and writing the monthly EA Groups Newsletter.
In the last few years Marisa studied for a Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University in DC, while also
Working on operations and community building at the Legal Priorities Project
Working on operations for Effective Institutions Project
Acting as a research assistant at fp21
Interning with the Department of State’s Knowledge Management Program.
To expand on what is written here about Marisa’s role with ALLFED, I would like to add that when Marisa volunteered with us a few years ago, she contributed in several meaningful ways. She was actively engaged in our work exploring the intersection of catastrophic risk, social sciences, and humanities. Marisa also provided invaluable feedback on how we could improve our volunteer program at the time. Her thoughtful suggestions were incredibly helpful and demonstrated just how much she cared. I remember our calls being filled with a lot of joy, laughter, and the desire to do good.