Cari Tuna (born 1986) is an American journalist and philanthropist. She is the co-founder and president of Good Ventures, the president of Open Philanthropy, and a board member of GiveWell.
Background
Tuna grew up in Evansville, Indiana. Both of her parents were medical doctors. In high school, she was valedictorian, served as student council president, and founded her school’s Amnesty International chapter.[1] She studied political science at Yale University, where she received a BA degree in 2008.[2]
Journalism career
While pursuing her undergraduate studies, Tuna wrote extensively for Yale Daily News. She subsequently contributed to the Evansville Courier & Press, interned at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and, between 2008 and 2011, was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered the California economy, the real-estate market, and the higher-education system.[1][2]
Philanthropic career
Tuna started dating Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook and Asana, around 2009. In December 2010, Tuna and Moskovitz signed the Giving Pledge, becoming the youngest couple ever to do so.[1] To fulfill that commitment, they established the foundation Good Ventures, of which Tuna became its president. At around that time, while preparing to transition from journalism to philanthropy, Tuna read Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save, which introduced her “to the idea of not just trying to do some good with your giving, but doing as much good as you can.”[3][4][5] It was also from that book that Tuna first learned about GiveWell. Shortly thereafter, she and Moskovitz met Holden Karnofsky, who was then GiveWell’s co-executive director. Tuna was impressed by GiveWell’s commitment to both transparency and cause neutrality, and a collaboration between Good Ventures and GiveWell ensued. In April 2011, Tuna joined GiveWell’s board of directors;[4] in December that year, Good Ventures gave substantial grants to GiveWell’s top-rated organizations;[3] and in June 2012, Karnofsky announced that GiveWell and Good Ventures planned to “act as a single team”,[6] which resulted in the creation of GiveWell Labs and, in August 2014, of the Open Philanthropy Project.[7]
Under Tuna’s leadership, Good Ventures has, as of August 2022, granted over $1.7 billion to organizations working in global health and development, farmed animal welfare, global catastrophic risks, and other cause areas.[8]
Further reading
MacAskill, William (2016) Fireside chat with Cari Tuna, Effective Altruism Global, August 7.
Matthews, Dylan (2018) You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do?, Vox, October 16.
Olanoff, Drew (2013) Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna launch site for their philanthropic foundation, Good Ventures, TechCrunch, March 12.
Schultz, Abby (2019) Open Philanthropy Project’s Cari Tuna on funding global health, Penta, September 23.
Related entries
Dustin Moskovitz | GiveWell | Good Ventures | Open Philanthropy
- ^
Cha, Ariana Eunjung (2014) Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy, The Washington Post, December 26.
- ^
Callahan, David (2013) Meet Cari Tuna, the woman giving away Dustin Moskovitz’s Facebook fortune, Inside Philanthropy, September 12.
- ^
Tuna, Cari (2011) Guest post from Cari Tuna, The GiveWell Blog, December 23.
- ^
Preston, Caroline (2012) Another Facebook co-founder gets philanthropic, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 10.
- ^
Gunther, Marc (2018) Giving in the light of reason, Stanford Social Innovation Review.
- ^
Karnofsky, Holden (2012) GiveWell and Good Ventures, The GiveWell Blog, June 28.
- ^
Karnofsky, Holden (2014) Open Philanthropy Project (formerly GiveWell Labs), The GiveWell Blog, August 20.
- ^
Good Ventures (2021) Grants database, Good Ventures.