Iâm one of the Community Liaisons for the EA community (alongside Julia Wise and Charlotte Darnell).
Iâm a contact for community health support for EA groups, and I also works on assessing and mitigating risks to the EA community.
I initially studied a lot of physics, then was a high school teacher for 11 years before moving full time into EA community building. I ran local and national EA groups and worked on EA outreach projects, before joining CEAâs Groups Team in early 2020 to support EA groups worldwide. I started working for the Community Health team mid 2021.
Catherine Lowđ¸
Karma: 3,958
Thanks for your questions James
> This should therefore be easily transferable into feedback to the grantee.I think this is where we disagreeâthis written information often isnât in a good shape to be shared with applicants and would need significant work before sharing.
> The post you linked by Linch and the concern he raises that by being transparent about the reasons for not making a grant may risk applicants overupdating on the feedback seems unfounded/âunevidenced. I also question how relevant given they werenât funded anyway, so why would you be concerned theyâd over update?
The concern here is that people can alter their plan based on the feedback with the hope it would mean that theyâd have a better chance of getting the opportunity in the future. As Linch says in his post
> Often, to change someoneâs plans enough, it requires careful attention and understanding, multiple followup calls, etc.Iâve personally seen cases where it seems that feedback sends a project off in a direction that isnât especially good. This can happen when people have different ideas of what would be reasonable steps to take in response to the feedback.
But youâre right, Linch and I donât provide evidence for the rate of problems caused by overupdating. This is a good nudge for me to think about how problematic this is overall, and whether Iâm overreacting due to a few cases.
> If you donât tell them they were a near miss and what changes may change your mind, then instead the risk is they either update randomly or the project is just completely cannedâwhich feels worse for edge cases.
I think it is most useful for decision makers to share feedback when a) it is a near miss, and b) the decision maker believes they can clearly describe something that the applicant can do that would make the person/âproject better and would likely lead to an approval.
MakÂing it easÂier for deÂciÂsion-makÂers to give feedback
Hi Frida,
Iâm really sorry you had a bad experience with our team. You are welcome to share your experience with our team lead Nicole (nicole.ross@centreforeffectivealtruism.org).
Sometimes people want to discuss a concern with us confidentially â our confidentiality policy is outlined here. This means we sometimes donât have permission to talk to the person concerned at all, or canât share many details as it might identify the people that came to us. In those cases we sadly arenât in a good position to discuss the situation in depth with the people involved. I realise it is really frustrating to receive only vague feedback or none at all, and in an ideal world this would be different.
ConÂtact peoÂple for the EA community
AdÂvice for EA org staff and EA group orÂganisers inÂterÂactÂing with poliÂtiÂcal campaigns
The EA donation swap project has had very little usage over the last couple of years and has been officially discontinued.
You can find out about tax deductible effective giving options in your country by checking out Giving What We Canâs guide.
Iâd 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 Iâm going to miss a bunch of things. I guess that was one striking feature of Marisa â she saw things that needed to be done, or heard peopleâs requests for help or advice, and she didnât 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 listâplease 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 sheâd 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 â keeping the org running smoothly; helping run RC Forward, a charity that allows Canadian donors to donate to the worldâs 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 donât live near or canât attend local EA group meetups. She mostly ran this in her free time â 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 Stateâs Knowledge Management Program.
Iâm devastated by this news. From the first time I worked with Marisa, 7 years ago, it was clear she had a deep compassion for others (human and animal), an ability to authentically connect with a wide range of people, a sharp mind, fantastic sense of humour, and unwavering motivation.
During these last couple of years where Marisa was desperately unwell, I always hoped that she would one day hit on some successful treatment for her agonising illness and sheâd make her way back to the optimistic, future focussed, extraordinarily driven person I first got to know and love.
It is just so sad â for her, for all those who cared about her, and for those lives she was yet to touch. My heart goes out to all her friends, family, her former colleagues, and her dog Chance.
Marisa with a dog (a different dog, not Chance)This is Chance
Marisa at an EA Anywhere meetup.
I think the general question of whether enlightenment is real, and if so how could more people achieve it, is a very interesting one and Iâd be interested in reading more about.
I did want to note that I donât think that Spencerâs twitter poll is much evidence for your headline statement âMore than 50% of EAs probably believe Enlightenment is realâ. I think the EAs people who follow Spencer, and choose to respond to this poll are going to be a reasonably skewed section of the community.
Given that EAGx Utrecht might be the most convenient EAGx for a good chunk of Western Europe, Iâm not sure how important it is to have a goal for a % speakers with strong Dutch connections rather than Europe connections. But the density of talented Dutch folk in the community is very high, so you might hit 35% without any specific goal to do so.
Thanks for the public update. Some readers might also be interested in what actions and decisions EV and the Community Health team have been taking around this.
Over the last 9 months Owen has not been allowed to attend EV-run events and in-person spaces (like EA Global and EV run offices). EV exec is currently deciding how EV will interact with Owen going forward, and are planning to publish that in the future. They have sought external advice and advice from our team.
We are in communication with Owen about professional updates on his end so we can check in about safeguards where relevant. We have given him some advice aimed to prevent possible future harm.
People actively considering the choice of whether to work with Owen based on the balance of information available are welcome to reach out to us for input as part of their decision making process. Feel free to reach out to me (catherine@centreforeffectivealtruism.org) if you are in this position.
Thanks for sharing all this information Kat. It seems like this situation has been very difficult for everyone involved. Members of the community health team will look through the post, comments and appendix and work out what our next steps (if any) will be.
Congrats on the new job, and a warm welcome to our community!
I encourage you to reach out to Kathryn from Magnify Mentoring (Iâm one of the board members). We support and connect women, non-binary and trans people interested in having a large impact. We have dozens of great mentors, many of whom are young women in leadership positions at orgs funded by EA motivated donors. (You also might be a good fit for becoming a mentor in the future once you have your bearings!)
Good luck!
Hereâs where CEA staff are donatÂing in 2023
Catherine from Community Health here. I was aware of this grant application. After discussion with my colleagues in Community Health who were also aware of the same concerns about Nonlinear mentioned in this post, I decided not to advise EAIF to decline this application. Some of the reasons for that were:
The funding was for a project run by three other people (not Nonlinear staff), and I had no concerns about those people working on this project
The three people were not going to be living with Kat and Emerson, which made risks to them lower
At that stage, I had heard some but not all of the complaints listed in this post, so I didnât have the same picture as I do now. The complaints were confidential, which constrained the possible moves I could make â I wasnât able to get more information, and I couldnât share information with the EAIF team that might lead to someone identifying the complainant or Nonlinear guessing that someone complaining had affected their grant decision.
I could and did put some risk mitigation measures in place, in particular, by requiring the grant to be made on the condition that they set up an incubation contract to formalise the roles, reducing the risk that the incubatees and Nonlinear would have different expectation of access to funds and ownership of the project (which was one of the problems Alice reported).
I didnât request that EAIF send the money directly to the three people involved in the project, rather than Nonlinear, but I was pleased that it happened
Looking back, given the information and constraints I had at the time, I think this was a reasonable decision.
The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEAâs Community Health team as a result of their reports.
The situation with person L was deeply tragic. This comment explains some of the actions taken by CEAâs Community Health team as a result of their reports.
Hi Mandelbrot,
Thanks for sharing. The stories of individual women from Silicon Valley are very harrowing.
This point in struck me:
> The men who victimized us are shaping the world. We are canaries for their disregard for human dignity.
It is a deeply sad thing about the world that those who wield power are often unethical or ignorant of the plight of those who they affect. With the improvement in AI technology, Iâm expecting rapid changes in who (or what) wields power, so Iâm feeling very anxious about this getting worse.
I encourage victims of sexual misconduct to reach out to others for support, and to seriously consider reporting the incident.
People you can report to or seek support from:
If the incident relates to someone involved in the EA community in some way, you can contact the Community Liaisons (Julia Wise, Charlotte Darnell and me), anonymously if you wish.
University authorities if the misconduct involved university staff or students, or a university affiliated group
Police
Human resources staff or managers, if the misconduct was associated with a workplace
The organiser of the event, if the incident happened at an event.
A lawyerâone option with an advice line is Bay Area Legal Aid, or this guidance from Womenâs Law on finding a lawyer
And friends and family
Many countries have free sexual misconduct advice available. Some people find it helpful to talk to one of these support services to learn more about what is likely to happen if you report to the police. Here are some resources that may be useful for the US, UK and Australia. We donât have experience working with these organisations.Information and Support for Sexual Harassment Survivors - mostly US
RAINNâUS
Free legal advice on sexual assault or sexual harassment (US only)
List of sexual assault servicesâAustralia
Respect@WorkâAustralia (workplace)
We also encourage victims to seek mental health support. EA Mental Health Navigator can help people in our community access support.
In case you missed it, and youâre interested. Iâve put some updates relating to the the Community Health and Special Projects Team thinking and actions about concerns about Nonlinear on Benâs initial post.
General statement (10th Sept)
An incomplete list of actions weâve taken to reduce risk of other people ending up in similarly bad situations (11th Sept)
Rough timeline and thinking (New â 20th Sept)
Iâm a bit of a Benthamite âThe question is not, âCan they reason?â nor, âCan they talk?â but rather, âCan they suffer?ââ
For any plausible (to me) guess about which non-human animals are capable of suffering, there are far far more non-human animals living in terrible conditions than humans in similarly bad conditions, and there just seems to be so many underfunded and underexplored ways we could help reduce that suffering. Iâve also seen some cost-effectiveness estimations that indicate you can help thousands of animals a lot for the same cost as helping one person a lot. (âa lotâ being very vague!)
The only reason why Iâm not at 100% agree is because helping humans become healthier might cause larger positive flow on effects, and this might add up to more impact in the long run. Thatâs super tentative and could go either wayâe.g. it seems possible that helping animals now could lead to our species being more ethical towards sentient beings in the long run too.