jessica_mccurdy🔸

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Apr 7, 2025, 4:56 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: AnonymousEAForumAccount’s comment on: Ste­ward­ship: CEA’s 2025-26 strat­egy to reach and raise EA’s ceiling

  Thank you for thoughtfully engaging! On the growth team side, Angelina is unfortunately ill right now, but we plan on responding to this in a few days when she gets back :)

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Mar 31, 2025, 6:39 PM

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Chris Leong’s comment on: Ste­ward­ship: CEA’s 2025-26 strat­egy to reach and raise EA’s ceiling

  I just want to quickly note that I think there are a lot of people who would resonate with the principles of EA but haven’t heard about it. Very few people have heard of EA, and while there are some methodological nuances to be had with this study, it suggests that the number of EA-sympathetic students on NYU’s campus is over 5x the number of students who were sympathetic and familiar with EA. So generally, I think there is a lot of potential growth available of people who do strongly align to EA principles.

  You could argue that growth mechanisms to find these people would still lead to the movement having weaker commitment to the principles. I address some adjacent points in my response to Neel’s comment here.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Mar 31, 2025, 6:29 PM

  15 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: Ste­ward­ship: CEA’s 2025-26 strat­egy to reach and raise EA’s ceiling

  Thanks Neel! I’ve jotted down some quick clarifications below.

  Overall: as I mentioned in my previous comment, I don’t think growth is obviously good and there are a lot of various risks to be aware of. I also think that even though it is only one of four strategy pillars at CEA it is a somewhat easier pillar for us to contribute to as we have more foundations for it. That could mean us unintentionally prioritizing it too much, and that is something I am trying to track. So, overall, I am sympathetic to a lot of your concerns but generally am more optimistic about this direction (as I’ll discuss below).

  Some more specific clarifications:

  1. We are trying to grow EA over time, not just during this year. Growing over time will require doing things like working on brand, foundation building, and rehabilitation. We are serious about the “sustainable” part of growth and growth itself is only one of our four major strategy pillars this year.

  2. We are not optimizing for growth — our vision is currently to aim for moderate, sustainable growth (versus growth at all costs). We think growth over time will be important for EA to reach its full potential, but optimizing for it would likely be counterproductive to impact goals for various reasons, as you say.

  3. We are trying to grow the number of people involved in EA across the entire funnel, not just at the top. So part of growth is helping people become more high context/​helping high context people progress in their involvement and impact.

     1. I think that retention of people already energized by EA is an important part of growth (if people leave or become demotivated this is of course bad for growth!) — part of this project is thinking about how to double down and revitalize the existing community, and not just about how to bring in new people.

     2. I think it’s appropriate that some EA community building programs have some context level barrier to entry (for instance in-person EA Global events have an admissions policy), whereas some don’t (the EA Newsletter is designed to be a no-barrier intro to EA). My general take is that different spaces should continue to optimize for people with different levels of context. For many of the context-restricted programs, I am actively fighting for “lowering the bar” to be off the table as a growth strategy.

  Quick response to another piece:

  I think Reflections and lessons from Effective Ventures is a nice example of some of the post morteming etc. I am not saying this is /​enough/​ but wanted to flag the example as writing it took a fair amount of capacity and shows some work in this area.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Mar 28, 2025, 12:09 PM

  26 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Ste­ward­ship: CEA’s 2025-26 strat­egy to reach and raise EA’s ceiling

  Hi, I’m Jessica, and I lead the growth pillar of CEA’s strategy. I’m excited about the potential for the EA community to grow and for EA ideas to reach more people, and I wanted to share how we’re thinking about that growth.

  Our main goal is the same as EA’s: to help others as effectively as possible. We believe that growing the EA community can help us achieve more of the good we want to see in the world. While the community isn’t perfect, I’m proud of its accomplishments. I believe it can help many more people increase their impact—while the EA community can benefit from new perspectives, experiences, and domain knowledge..

  That said, we’re very aware that growth comes with risks. As the post mentions, we’re not trying to grow EA at all costs. Growth isn’t our only goal, and we’ve put internal principles in place to avoid compromising our core values in pursuit of scale. I feel pretty good about where we are on that.

  Other concerns are harder to track, like increased risk from risky actors joining our community, scandals, or undesired change in community culture, ambition, or epistemics leading us to be less effective overall. There’s also the concern that our strategies could lead to many people getting involved in EA, but their involvement is not overall positive (either for them or the world, e.g., if they feel they don’t have good ways to contribute immediately).

  These are real concerns, and we’re actively tracking them. I used to be more skeptical about EA growth myself. But overall, I’m excited about aiming for moderate, sustainable growth at the current margin—moving the trajectory upward while managing risks carefully. We want and need the community’s help in spotting those risks early.

  I also lead the Groups Team, and I want to briefly speak to group organizers: I could imagine someone reading this update and making major changes to their group strategy based on CEA’s growth focus. Please don’t over-update based on this. We continue to advocate for advertising your programs broadly at the start of the semester (and specific points in the year for non-uni groups) and then focusing on a smaller group of people who are taking the ideas most seriously. If our advice changes, we’ll share that clearly through our usual channels (Slack, newsletter, advising calls, etc.).

  The guidance in our existing materials—like this advice post, my EAG talk on common pitfalls in community building, and our Resource Center —still stands. We think groups trying to grow too much can be counterproductive to their goals. We care deeply about more than just numbers, that hasn’t changed under our new strategy.

  Finally, I may not have time to engage much in comments, but please do reach out to groups@centreforeffectivealtruism.org with any questions or concerns.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Mar 14, 2025, 1:08 AM

  12 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: Kairos is hiring a Head of Oper­a­tions/​Found­ing Generalist

  Agus is one of my favorite people I have ever worked with! Would recommend :)

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Feb 7, 2025, 10:56 PM

  25 points

  3 ∶ 0

  on: jes­sica_mc­curdy’s Shortform

  Quick take on Burnout

  Note: I am obviously not an expert here nor do I have much first hand experience but I thought it could be useful for people I work with to know how I currently conceptualize burnout. I was then encouraged to post on the forum. This is based off around 4 cases of burnout that I have seen (at varying levels of proximity) and conversations with people who have seen significantly more.

  • Different Conceptions of Burnout

    • Basic conception that people often have: working too hard until energy is depleted.

    • Yes, working too hard can lead to exhaustion, but there’s a difference between exhaustion and burnout.

    • Exhaustion vs. Burnout

      • Exhaustion:

        • Result of working very hard/​ a lot of hours. Possibly including sleep deprivation or just brain fog.

        • Can often be resolved with a short break or vacation (eg: one week)

      • Burnout:

        • More pervasive and affects many areas of life/​work. While it shared many physical symptoms of exhaustion, it is deeper.

        • A short vacation isn’t sufficient to resolve it.

  • Core Feelings Tied to Burnout

    • Burnout is often tied to more core feelings like motivation, recognition, and feeling good about the work you’re doing. It is more tied to your feelings of motivation and value than pure sleep deprivation or lack of rest. If someone is unsure of the value of their work and isn’t super recognized, especially if they’re also working really hard, that can really get into your brain and feels like a recipe for burnout.

  • Importance of Motivation

    • This is why I stress the value of motivation so much

    • Nuance: we should distinguish motivation from being overly enthusiastic about programs.

      • Jessica take is that we should have set times for re-evaluating the value of programs. Having set evaluation times helps reduce constant worry about program value but still maintains our ability to have a critical eye toward making sure we are having a large impact.

    • To some extent motivation is a very moldable thing and if you want to try and get more motivated, you can (but it often includes help from others like your manager and team)

  • Quick note

    • This isn’t me advocating for exhaustion because it isn’t burnout. I think exhaustion can be very counterproductive and leads to future hours being less productive.

  My main thing here is that I don’t think our LFG /​ work hard culture is the recipe for burnout. I think being uncertain of the value of our programs, facing many internal structural changes, and not being on top of motivation can be. This is part of why I am excited about the M&E work we are doing, people doing tour of duties, and people tracking motivation/​actively valuing it.

  Jessica addition in Dec. 2024:

  • Getting sick more often than usual is an indicator to be aware of. This can lead to a spiral of “Get sick, get less done, get more stressed and feel like you are not doing good enough/​not feeling good about your work, that stress causing you to get more sick/​get sick again”
    
    
    (I will add for the forum that right now I am feeling really good about the value of our programs but its always good to be approaching programs critically to ensure you are having the most impact :) )

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Jan 29, 2025, 2:50 PM

  35 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: Meta Co­or­di­na­tion Fo­rum (2024) /​ Ta­lent Need Survey

  Very quickly: I feel like it’s useful to share that I did this survey and found it very hard, and a lot of other people did too. In particular, it did feel pretty rushed for such difficult questions that we didn’t necessarily have a fully informed pre-existing take on. OP does mention this, but I wanted to stress that for people reading this post.
  
  I still think it has a lot of useful information and is directionally very informative. I might get a chance to write up more thoughts here, but I am not sure I will be able to. I mostly wanted to give a quick additional flag :)

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Jan 3, 2025, 1:24 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Reflect­ing on Hive’s 2024: What Worked and What Didn’t in Our Com­mu­nity Build­ing Efforts

  Thanks for sharing this! The power of prompts and letting go of nice to haves have been things I’ve noticed in my work as well. Good luck with your future efforts here!

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Dec 20, 2024, 4:11 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: What apps or meth­ods have helped you bud­get so you know how much you can give?

  I have found rocket money to be quite helpful!

Rekindling the Fire: Prin­ci­ples-First EA Groups as a Path to Im­pact [Talk Tran­script]

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:07 PM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Luisa_Rodriguez’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  Thank you! And thank you so much for your podcasts—like I mentioned in the post I found them really helpful and relatable and am grateful for you sharing so much!

  I’m on buproprion xl and generally they don’t recommend taking it at night because it can cause insomnia but I’m really lucky and have never really had problems with that. Instead, I just found waking up in the morning extremely difficult—I often woke up sad and just wanted to stay in bed and keep sleeping (even if I had slept a really long time). Due to the extended release, taking it at night means that peak effects are now happening in the mornings when I was most sad /​ low motivation before. So that was honestly just really great for me.

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:03 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jonas Hallgren 🔸’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  This is super interesting! How do you do the experiments? Do you change one thing at a time and track?

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Nov 22, 2024, 10:02 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: huw’s comment on: How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

  Thanks! I actually also was using bearable for a while there and had a similar experience of “it’s hard to find out info because of confounders but this is generally useful for being mindful of my wellbeing”. I don’t use it any more but might look into it again :)

  I remember thinking it was super cool when I found it

How I Im­proved my Wellbeing

Up­dates on CEA’s Pilot Univer­sity Program

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Sep 20, 2024, 1:39 AM

  9 points

  4 ∶ 0

  on: Five Years of An­i­mal Ad­vo­cacy Ca­reers: Our Jour­ney to im­pact, Les­sons Learned, and What’s Next

  Thank you for writing and sharing this! I’m excited about your work and also excited for other orgs to learn from it :)

  This is really impressive output for such a small team!

• jessica_mccurdy🔸Sep 5, 2024, 8:08 PM

  4 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Sur­vey: How Do Elite Chi­nese Stu­dents Feel About the Risks of AI?

  Just wanted to drop in this study: Harvard Undergraduate Survey on Generative AI since it seems somewhat related/​interesting :)

Com­mu­nity build­ing in effec­tive al­tru­ism (panel dis­cus­sion)

Po­ten­tial Pit­falls in Univer­sity EA Com­mu­nity Build­ing

• jessica_mccurdy🔸May 4, 2024, 1:48 PM

  27 points

  14 ∶ 15

  on: My La­ment to EA

  Hey

  I am really sorry to hear about all of these negative experiences. I feel lucky to have gotten to work with you over the years and seen the positive impact you have had on others in the community and the exciting work you have moved into. I think the community will be losing a really lovely person. I admire both your courage in posting this and that you are prioritizing your well-being right now.

  I was sad to hear that our team contributed to your negative experiences though I definitely understand. When I first was introduced to the idea of focusing on top universities, I also felt quite uncomfortable with the implications. I knew so many brilliant people not from those top universities and knew many systemic disadvantages prevent people from attending them.

  That being said, I do still endorse this prioritization (though not an exclusive one!). In case it’s useful context, for you or others reading this post, I’ve written some reasons why I think this.
  
  When piloting new forms of support or being limited in the number of universities a small team can give higher touch support to, hard decisions have to be made about which universities get that support.

  I believe most of the people who go on to have incredibly impactful careers will come from outside those top universities. That is part of why we set up UGAP—to help provide support and opportunities to promising individuals and groups around the world who might not have the same access and advantages.

  However, top universities are the places with the highest concentrations of people who ultimately have a very large influence on the world. Partially that is because of the screening mechanisms of the university and but partially it is because of the built-in benefits and unfair advantages that students receive while they attend those universities. Given that this is the reality we’re working with, I believe we should do our best to leverage the existing system and opportunities at these universities to help get more people into high-impact careers. That often means focusing resources on those universities even though that can be demotivating to others.

  
  Again, just wanted to note that I appreciate you sharing this post and am sorry to hear about your experience. I am wishing you the best.

  What links here?

  • Arepo's comment on CEA will con­tinue to take a “prin­ci­ples-first” ap­proach to EA by Zachary Robinson🔸 (Sep 22, 2024, 7:26 AM; 11 points)