Day in the Life: Abhi Kumar, Program Associate — Farm Animal Welfare

Open Philanthropy’s “Day in the Life” series showcases the wide-ranging work of our staff, spotlighting individual team members as they navigate a typical workday. We hope these posts provide an inside look into what working at Open Phil is really like. If you’re interested in joining our team, we encourage you to check out our open roles.

Abhi Kumar is a Program Associate on the Farm Animal Welfare team. He works on investigating the most promising opportunities to reduce the suffering of farm animals, with a focus on the development and commercialization of alternatives to animal products. Previously, he worked on the investment teams at the venture capital funds Lever VC and Ahimsa VC. He has an MMS from the Yale School of Management & HEC Paris, and a BSocSc from Singapore Management University. Fun fact: Abhi has completed six marathons and an Ironman.  

Day in the Life

I work on the Farm Animal Welfare team, also known internally as the “FAW” team. Our mission is to improve the lives of animals that are unlucky enough to be confined in factory farms. We do this by making grants to organizations and individuals whose work we think will most effectively improve living conditions for these animals. My primary responsibility on the team is to make grants in my area of expertise: alternatives to animal products, including plant-based meats and cellular agriculture. Grants are typically focused on accelerating these alternatives through collaboration with governments, companies, and academia. For instance, we recently made a grant to Dansk Vegetarisk Forening to advocate for increased R&D funding for alternative (alt) protein in Denmark. 

Lately, my mornings have started with calls with colleagues or potential grantees in Asia. I’m currently investigating a few potential grants to advance alt protein in Japan, so I spend my morning talking to experts on Japanese climate policy and reading through Japanese policy documents like the Green Food System Strategy. Japan is a promising country to expand alt protein efforts within because it’s an R&D powerhouse that is also showing more interest in alt protein innovation. After my morning calls, I reflect on potential grant recommendations for our leadership and identify what the key questions (or “cruxes”) are for me. Then, I note the topic as an agenda item for discussion with my manager Lewis, who supervises the FAW team. 

In the early afternoon, I have a check-in call with a current grantee. During these calls, we discuss what’s been going well and what hasn’t, as well as resolve any questions the grantee has. For instance, this grantee says they’d like to better understand our alt protein strategy, so I summarize the outcomes we’re looking for with our grantmaking: more government funding, increased industry engagement, and more high-impact academic research. After these calls, I type up my call notes into a ~five-line summary that I’ll share with my manager later. 

After that, I head down to my neighborhood café to focus on three writing tasks:

• First, I finish a memo on why we should fund a lab researching how to improve animal fat alternatives. My manager left a bunch of questions on my last draft, so I address his questions and re-share it with him for discussion later.
• Second, I write a grant approval email (what Open Phil staff know as the “handoff”) to a successful grantee and connect them with our Grants team, who handle all of the legal and logistical challenges involved with actually disbursing money. Without our wonderful Grants team, figuring out how to transfer funds to grantees would be pretty painful – I’m grateful for their expertise! 
• Lastly, I send a rejection email to a potential grantee I’ve been investigating. It’s a hard email to write because I’d really love to see their work funded, but the project proposal just doesn’t fit our strategy or budget. 

At this point, I’m a little drained, so I take a break and head out for a run. I live in London where sunlight is a rare commodity, so I’m glad that I managed to get some in today!

I finish the day with a 1-1 call with Lewis. We mainly talk through:

• New grants I’m working on: Particularly what we think of the key questions/uncertainties, and how they might factor into our decision whether or not to award a grant.
• Potential grant renewals: Two grants are coming up for renewal, so I discuss the evaluation criteria I’m planning to use, and by when I’m aiming to finish my investigation.
• Major updates in the alt protein world: Recently, there’s been a flurry of anti-alt protein laws across Europe and the US, so we’re considering if and how the FAW team might assist advocacy efforts opposing these laws. Our grantmaking is responsive to changes in policy and the political environment, so we make an effort to stay on top of trends in case conditions change in a way that might lead to adjusting our broader strategy.