I founded and work at Magnify Mentoring.
KMF
Karma: 1,609
This is so funny and great :) The banana thing made me laugh a ton. I love it!
I am listening to this- I agree it’s really interesting. Does anyone know whether there been an “investigation” (can’t think of a better word here) into the account of the CFAR workshop they attended? CFAR is still operating, that said, I don’t see much EA funding going to it at least recently. Thanks!
“2023: Magnify Mentoring expands to serve people from underrepresented groups generally. “It includes, but is not limited to, people from low to middle income countries, people of color, people from low-income households, etc.”—The intention here was to pilot a round for people from underrepresented groups not captured by gender. We haven’t reached consensus as to whether we will continue. It depends mostly on the impact asssessment of the round (which concludes this month). While it is accurate to say Magnify initially focused on improving diversity and inclusivity in the EA community, the organization’s strategy is now focused on supporting the careers and wellbeing broadly of people who are working in evidence-based initiaves with or without an EA link. I mention this mostly because I don’t want people to self-select out of applying for mentorship or mentoring with us.
A quick annoucement that Magnify mentee applications are now open!
Magnify mentee applications are currently open!
We would love to hear from you if you are a woman, non-binary person, or trans person of any gender who is enthusiastic about pursuing a high-impact career using evidence-based approaches. Please apply here by the 18th March.
Past mentees have been most successful when they have a clear sense of what they would like to achieve through the 6-month mentorship program. We look to match pairings based on the needs and availability of the mentee and mentor, their goals, career paths, and what skills they are looking to develop.
On average, mentees and mentors meet once a month for 60-90 minutes with a series of optional prompt questions prepared by our team. In the post-round feedback form, the average for “I recommend being a Magnify mentee” was 9.28/10 in Round 3 and 9.4/10 in Round 4. You can see testimonies from some of our mentees here, here and here. Some reported outcomes for mentees were:
Advice, guidance, and resources on achieving goals.
Connection and support in pursuing opportunities (jobs, funding).
Confidence-building.
Specific guidance (How to network? How to write a good resume?).
Joining a welcoming community for support through challenges.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Kathryn at <kathryn@magnifymentoring.org>.
Hi all! A heads up that it is that time again—Magnify mentee applications are open :) More below. Thank you so much :)
___“Magnify Mentoring applications are now open for women, non-binary, and trans people of all genders who are looking to pursue high impact careers. You can apply here. Applications will close on the 10th July 2024.
Past mentees have been particularly successful when they have a sense of what they would like to achieve through mentorship. The matching process normally takes us between 4-6 weeks. We look to match pairings based on the needs and availability of the mentee and mentor, their goals, career paths, and what skills they are looking to develop.
On average, mentees and mentors meet once a month for 60-90 minutes with a series of optional prompt questions prepared by our team. In the post-round feedback form, the average for “I recommend being a Magnify mentee” was 9.28/10 in Round 3 and 9.4/10 in Round 4. You can see testimonies from some of our mentees here, here and here..Some reported outcomes for mentees were:
Advice, guidance, and resources on achieving goals.
Connection and support in pursuing opportunities (jobs, funding).
Confidence-building.
Specific guidance (How to network? How to write a good resume?).
Joining a welcoming community for support through challenges”
Firm separation sounds great to me. I just also want to voice something like “Many people in the community have firmly taken strong stances” but regardless of what we say or do get lumped in with a load of stuff that we’ve pretty clearly said we find abhorrent and have firmly exiled from our community spaces (Im thinking of the case of Vassar here but also Im pretty sure they don’t want to be in EA spaces anyway because they aren’t EA!).
Huw: To what extent is this EA verses rationality? Above you keep saying, “EA needs to” but these are ultimately rationalist conferences. For example, I’m not sure what more we can do to loudly signal Vassar isn’t EA. He’s banned from literally everything and has been for coming up to 10 years. I am pretty sure that extends to multiple people listed here. I am just not sure how public those decisions are so I will stop listing but (shoots karma into space) I wouldn’t go near half of these people with a 60 foot long stick.
Let’s test that. I’d love it if the people who down-voted OP “agree” vote Jason’s (Edited to add next sentence) or Chris’ interpretations. Thanks!
P.s. Can someone please explain why the original poster is getting down-voted? This seems a reasonable question.
Hi without speaking for the organizers. My understanding is that the regulation requires that new buildings in the UK have separate, single-sex bathrooms. The Gov.UK website essentially says this is to avoid the “SOLE installation of gender-neutral facilities.” My impression is that gender-neutral toilets with multiple cubicles will be banned in new builds but not (for example) a toilet and sink in a private room (like what you typically see provided for people with disabilities). It seems (from an 80⁄20 look at the regulation) that “new” is a key qualifier here and that existing builds will maintain their existing facilities and organizers remain within their rights to designate bathrooms as unisex (although I would guess such facilities will exist already- I did take a quick look but did not find the answer quickly). As such, I believe the answer to (1) is “No.” The new law does not appear to touch upon (2) and under non-discrimination law in the UK the answer is “Yes”. I really hope this helps!
Final day to apply :) Thanks so much!
Pulling out a quick Magnify Mentoring update from the upcoming EA Newsletter.
We have launched a database of job seekers. If you are a recruiter at an organization working on evidence-based interventions to make the world better, please reach out to us.
We are planning to run a pilot project to evaluate the viability and usefulness of running additional mentorship rounds targeting individuals belonging to groups typically underrepresented in our focus areas. If the pilot is successful Magnify would continue to run two rounds per year for women, nonbinary, and trans people of all genders while adding in one or two separate rounds targeted at individuals belonging to these other groups. We plan to advertise the pilot round in December-January. We would love recommendations of potential mentors of all genders. Our one strict criteria is that mentors must be unusually kind people who are excited about supporting talented people and creating a warm and inclusive environment for everyone. Please drop us an email if you know anyone who fits this description including if you would like to become a mentor!
Results from our fifth round of mentorship can be found here.
We are delighted to announce we have been supported by Open Philanthropy. (Alongside our incredible individual donors.)
FWIW: a focus that has helped me is working out whether I think it’s worth continuing our program and whether it’s been a success is what concrete actions resulted from the connections. Do you have a sense of any resulting actions?
Hi Paula, (1) “I encourage the FEM team to engage in more rigorous research and to focus on capacity-building...” FWIW, I think giving the organization (who are engaging with this thread) more time to respond on the point you raise about the PMA survey would be significantly preferable than making a conclusion in either direction at least based on my reading of this thread. (2)”...partnering with other organizations that have a great deal of experience working in this space over a long period of time...” Two separate points: a. to what extent do you know they don’t do this? I know them to have extensively engaged with local organizations and had at least information sharing conversations with international organizations (f.e. Development Media International who were founded in 2005) from my very loose following of their work over the years. b. Sadly, and much to my personal heartbreak, from having worked in international women’s human rights myself for a number of years, it is certainly not the case that an organization who has been around a long time is more effective or even effective at all than an evidence-based, well run and connected new organization. I have actually been deeply disappointed by the average long-standing organization in this field but perhaps you have had better luck! :) Thanks!
Sorry, Linch- Austin is totally right. I am just useless at the Forum :)
FWIW: I want to offer a strong dissenting voice that I do not like how this has been handled in this comment section. Saying something isn’t intended to be harsh and mean doesn’t make it not harsh and mean. You can point out things that concern you without singling out individual people and I think the average person would have found this incredibly hurtful and off-putting.
Thank you so much. Magnify Mentoring would put to excellent use further donation support from the community. We have 200 mentee applications this time which I am currently reviewing and matching. On specific support, I am aware of Magnify Mentoring’s work, Epoch and FRI’s Mentorship program, and GPI’s recent programming. I am also working out whether we (Magnify) should do some Bay-specific event programming (think activities to further create a warm, welcoming space, focused on cheap information dissemination and career building activities) and I expect I’d try and raise a small side budget to this but I am still working out what already exists and what has been tried. Thank you so much, Ulrik and my turn to apologize for missing this ;)
Hi Liv :)
Look at the swap card user database well in advance, identify who you want to talk to, and book meetings early with them (particularly if they are recruiters or mid-senior career professionals). Take notes during the meeting so you know what you talked about. Get an email for follow-up actions if there are any. I don’t remember meetings after so I rely on the other person to follow up unless it’s me asking them for help. I also stake a table near a meeting point so I don’t have to find people and do walking coffee meetings or form a fetching coffee alliance with friend/husband.
These are basically just professional opportunities for me so I pack in a lot of meetings, get 8 hours of sleep, and stay 2 days after the conference ends if I want to see friends. I am also old, and boring, and these are part of my job so your mileage may vary :) You are welcome to hit me up if you’d like a friendly face and recommendations of people to meet!
Lilly: I am so pleased to read this- thank you for sharing your experiences with our network.
_
I hope it is appropriate to mention here, on the note of EA funding, that Magnify Mentoring got close to the wire funding-wise this time. Thanks to incredible individuals from our network, we now have enough funding to open rounds for applications in May to coincide with EAG London. We are not yet at our total fundraising 2023 goals. We are so excited to be able to welcome our new cohort of mentees though! :) If I can do anything at all to help in the meantime, please reach out to me at Kathryn (kathryn@magnifymentoring.org). If you are reading this and find our work compelling, we would love to hear from you. Thank you so much!
Personal opinion only: From watching a number of community builders end up in difficult situations over the years, I would strongly recommend anyone looking at EA community building as a career path carefully think about adequate compensation. When you are new to a series of ideas, especially those interacting with a sense of purpose, it is very easy to get excited, commit to a ton of work (often unpaid) with the assumption funders will see your work’s value when it’s off the ground and fund it. If you will work for free (for example, candidate referrals) there are many organizations that will take you up on the offer and “volunteer gigs” quickly become actual work with little/no compensation to match. Unfortunately, I have to say I have seen this particularly with people from Low to Middle Income Countries—you will end up with a lot of requests for referrels and/or people being referred to you by bigger organizations for “career chats” because those organizations don’t have anyone in the region so it gives a sense of funding endorsement/ implicit promise of funding when it might actually not be there. Further, you are very vulnerable both CV-wise and future grant-wise to the impacts of “brand shocks” and the perceived value of the EA brand generally. I strongly recommend caution.