Information for Centre for Effective Altruism

Table of contents

Basic information

Item Value
Other names CEA
Country United Kingdom
Facebook username CentreforEffectiveAltruism
YouTube username @EffectiveAltruismVideos
Twitter username @EffectvAltruism
Website https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/
Team page https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/team
Launch date 2012-01-01
Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Effective_Altruism
Hosting organization Effective Ventures
Last recorded date when we made major data updates for this org 2023-12-19
Hosted organizations Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research
Donations List Website (data still preliminary) donor

Positions count by year

Hover over a name to see the position and date range. This table only includes positions where at least the start date is known. The positions count can count the same person multiple times if they held different positions; similarly, the list of staff may include the same person multiple times if they held more than one position during a single year. For each year, a person is included if they were at the organization for any part of the year; this means the actual staff count at any point during the year can be lower (or higher, if some staff held multiple positions in a single year).

Year Positions count Researchers General staff Associates Board members Advisors
2017 1 Ales Flidr
2018 1 Johannes Treutlein

Number of full-time staff at the beginning each year

The following table lists some dates and people who were at the organization on the given date (namely, the start of the year). The table may not list every person who worked for the organization (e.g. they could have joined and left in the middle of a single year). This table excludes associates, interns, advisors, and board members.

Date Staff count Staff

Full history of additions and subtractions

This table shows the full change history of positions. Each row corresponds to at least one addition or removal of a position. Additions are in green and subtractions are in red. If a position name changed, it is listed simultaneously as an addition (of the new name) and removal (of the old name) and colored yellow. Additionally there are faded variants of each color for visited links.

Date Number of positions Number of positions added Number of positions removed Positions added Positions removed
1 1 0 Owen Cotton-Barratt
2017-06-01 2 1 0 Ales Flidr
2017-08-01 1 0 -1 Ales Flidr
2018-06-01 2 1 0 Johannes Treutlein
2018-09-01 1 0 -1 Johannes Treutlein

List of people (3 positions)

Person Title Start date End date AI safety relation Subject Employment type Source Notes
Owen Cotton-Barratt Director of Research technical research [1] One of 37 AGI Safety Researchers of 2015 funded by donations from Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project
Johannes Treutlein Summer research fellow 2018-06-01 2018-09-01 position intern [2]
Ales Flidr Summer Research Fellow 2017-06-01 2017-08-01 intern [3] AI policy research with Eric Drexler.

Products (1 product)

Name Creation date Description
Effective Altruism Forum 2014-09-10 With Rethink Charity, Ryan Carey. A community blog about effective altruism which often has posts about AI safety. The forum was announced on LessWrong by Ryan Carey [4].

Organization documents (14 documents)

Title Publication date Author Publisher Affected organizations Affected people Document scope Cause area Notes
Announcing my retirement 2021-11-25 Aaron Gertler Effective Altruism Forum Centre for Effective Altruism Aaron Gertler Employee departure Effective altruism/movement growth Aaron Gertler announces his departure as content specialist at Effective Altruism Forum, to happen on December 10th, 2021. Aaron declares having a good experience managing the forum, and announces joining Open Philanthropy as their communications officer, and also Effective Giving Quest as their first partnered streamer.
Summary of Core Feedback Collected by CEA in Spring/Summer 2019 2019-11-07 Ben West Effective Altruism Forum Centre for Effective Altruism Third-party commentary on organization Movement building The document summarizes findings from feedback collected by CEA in the Spring and Summer of 2019 from "about a dozen people who work in senior positions in EA-aligned organizations" about CEA and the effective altruism community. The post also says "The feedback is presented “as is,” without any endorsement by CEA." Things listed as going well include (1) comnunity health and events projects, (2) smart, talented, and thoughtful members, (3) kind members. Things which could be improved: (1) execution issues with EA Grants, EA Funds, and other projects, (2) communication and branding issues with EA Global and the EA Forum, (3) perception of low welcomingness, (4) demographic homogeneity.
Roundtable: how can remote employees maintain a healthy work-life balance? 2019-10-26 Cash Callaghan Animal Charity Evaluators The Humane League, Centre for Effective Altruism, Animal Equality, Rethink Charity, Animal Charity Evaluators, ProVeg International Stephanie Frankle, Julia Wise, Antonia Vitale, Baxter Bullock, Leah Edgerton General discussion of organizational practices AI safety|Animal welfare The blog post is a roundtable between people working in executive, operational, and community health roles at organizations in the animal welfare and effective altruism spaces. It is mainly focused on how organizations with remote employees can maintain a healthy work-life balance. Some of the organizations are completely remote (they have no central office) whereas others have both on-site and remote employees. Common themes emphasized by multiple participants include: work-life separation through time (keeping clear working hours boundaries) and space (e.g., having a designated space for working in one's home), open and proactive communication, encouraging time off with leadership setting an example, and keeping a healthy level of social interaction through tools such as Slack. Also cross-posted to the Effective Altruism Forum at [5] (no comments there as of November 10, 2019)
Max Dalton appointed as CEA’s Executive Director 2019-10-18 Owen Cotton-Barratt|Jenna Peters|Julia Wise|Nick Beckstead|Will MacAskill Centre for Effective Altruism Centre for Effective Altruism Max Dalton Successful hire Movement building The blog post announces that Max Dalton is now the Executive Director of CEA. Dalton had been serving as Interim Executive Director of CEA since the firing of Larissa Hesketh-Rowe from the Executive Director position in January. The blog post is written by the committee that had been entrusted with the CEO search. This committee "solicited recommendations for possible candidates from over 70 stakeholders and worked to investigate roughly a dozen recommended people. The committee would like to thank staff, stakeholders, and community members for their input and the candidates for their time and patience during this process."
Roundtable: how can remote organizations effectively hire and onboard new employees? 2019-09-28 Cash Callaghan Animal Charity Evaluators The Humane League, Centre for Effective Altruism, Animal Equality, Rethink Charity, Animal Charity Evaluators, ProVeg International Stephanie Frankle, Julia Wise, Antonia Vitale, Baxter Bullock, Leah Edgerton General discussion of organizational practices AI safety|Animal welfare The blog post is a roundtable between people working in executive, operational, and community health roles at organizations in the animal welfare and effective altruism spaces. It is mainly focused on how organizations with remote employees can effectively hire and onboard new employees. Some of the organizations are completely remote (they have no central office) whereas others have both on-site and remote employees. Common themes emphasized by multiple participants include: using "culture add" and not just culture fit (to reduce risk of homogeneity), frequent check-ins, in-person meetings where feasible, and culture orientation for new employees (either an explicit orientation session, or through Slack and check-in meetings).
The peculiar #metoo story of animal activist Jacy Reese 2019-03-28 Marc Gunther Sentience Institute, Centre for Effective Altruism Jacy Reese, Kelly Witwicki, Julia Wise HR controversy Animal welfare Marc Gunther, a commentator on animal welfare activism and nonprofit activity, discusses the backstory and implications of the apology post [6] of animal activist Jacy Reese. He includes more discussion of the role of the Center for Effective Altruism, and links to the Google Doc [7] with answers by Kelly Witwicki providing background. Witwicki works with Reese at the Sentience Institute and is also engaged to Reese
Apology 2019-03-22 Jacy Reese Effective Altruism Forum Sentience Institute, Centre for Effective Altruism Jacy Reese HR controversy Animal welfare Jacy Reese, a public figure in animal welfare advocacy and a key member of the Sentience Institute, posts an apology on the Effective Altruism Forum: "It has recently been brought to my attention that I have made people uncomfortable through my verbal and written advances. I’m deeply sorry to everyone I hurt or made uncomfortable. I intend to step back from public life and the activism communities I’ve belonged to and reflect on my mistakes further." Marc Gunther, a commentator on animal welfare activism and nonprofit activity, describes the post as follows in [8] "An 812-word statement, under the headline “Apology,” posted last week by Reese on the forum of the Centre for Effective Altruism, the global hub of the effective altruism movement."
Comment on After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation 2019-02-27 Aaron Gertler Effective Altruism Forum Centre for Effective Altruism, Open Philanthropy, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Ought, Vox, AI Impacts, Center for Human-Compatible AI, Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative Job application experience Various Gertler describes his experience applying to various effective altruism-related organizations.
Does anyone know what happened at CEA regarding the leadership change? 2019-02-26 Milan Griffes Effective Altruism Facebook group Centre for Effective Altruism Larissa Hesketh-Rowe Employee departure Effective altruism/movement growth Milan Griffes seeks more background for the public announcement of the departure of CEA CEO Larissa Hesketh-Rowe [9] In the comments, Sam Deere of CEA says "We don't provide specific details when staff depart the organisation." Also, others in the comments say that the announcement by CEA was unprofessional in many ways. Relatedly, Milan notes in the comments that Kerry Vaughan also appears to have left CEA
Comment on After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation 2019-02-26 Max Daniel Effective Altruism Forum Open Philanthropy, OpenAI, Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, Centre for Effective Altruism, Future of Humanity Institute, AI Impacts Daniel gives his experience applying to various effective altruist organizations, detailing the time he spent on applications and preparation.
After one year of applying for EA jobs: It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation 2019-02-25 EA applicant Effective Altruism Forum Open Philanthropy, Centre for Effective Altruism, Future of Humanity Institute, Effective Giving UK, Rethink Charity, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Global Priorities Institute, Ought, Veddis, Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative A pseudonymous effective altruist gives their experience applying to various effective altruist (and related) organizations.
Announcing a change of leadership at CEA 2019-02-08 Centre for Effective Altruism Centre for Effective Altruism Larissa Hesketh-Rowe Employee departure Effective altruism/movement growth The post announces that Larissa Hesketh-Rowe is stepping down as CEO of CEA, and says that she was asked to resign because she was unable to meet the performance expectations for the role
I took a significant pay cut to work as a software engineer for CEA 2019-01-27 Sarah Spikes Jeff Kaufman Centre for Effective Altruism Sarah Spikes, Sam Deere Job experience Effective altruism/movement growth In this comment on a post by Jeff Kaufman, Sarah Spikes describes her experience working for CEA, which she finds disappointing in various ways, due to the lack of recognition for her experience and the cancellation of the projects she was working on, without explanation. A later comment also notes her salary of $84,000. Original thread on Facebook: [10]
Since I am mentioned in person in this comment … 2017-01-15 Oliver Habryka Facebook Centre for Effective Altruism Oliver Habryka Movement building In response to an anonymous comment saying in part “I feel like a lot of skilled people are now wasting their time on EA (e.g., Oliver Habryka), many of whom would otherwise be working on issues more directly related to AGI”, Oliver Habryka responds that he is no longer working in effective altruist movement building and that he almost certainly should not have spent two years working in the area.

Documents (0 documents)

Title Publication date Author Publisher Affected organizations Affected people Affected agendas Notes

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