From Google to co-founding a global health charity: Mid-career transitions with Martyn James

Martyn James | Co-founder of Clear Solutions

Martyn spent more than a decade at Google in technical partnership roles before exploring a career transition, realising that he was starting to feel a bit restless in his career. “Life was good,” he recalls, “but I wanted to do something a little more worthwhile.”

Martyn first heard about effective altruism (EA) in passing around 2013 from a colleague, though he wasn’t initially interested in the space. “I remember Googling it and thinking, ‘it’s a bunch of Oxford philosophers, probably not for me.'” Years later, in 2020, Martyn was at home on parental leave. He began listening to the 80,000 Hours podcast and the ideas resonated. Eventually, he joined the EA Introductory Program. “It was the first time I found a structured, evidence-based path for people who wanted to do good.”

Though still sleep-deprived and caring for a newborn, Martyn kept exploring EA. The first concrete opportunity came when he encountered the Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) incubation program which provides funding, ideas, and training to help participants found their own charities. “It was the only EA-related job I ever applied for,” he says. “And I wasn’t even sure I’d be a fit. But as I made it through each individual round, I started realizing: maybe this is for me.”

He was accepted, and in 2023, co-founded Clear Solutions, a nonprofit tackling child mortality from diarrhea in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African countries. In these areas, diarrhea can result in fatal dehydration, so the nonprofit equips community health workers to deliver oral rehydration salts (ORS) to households. Caregivers have it ready for when a child gets sick, making the treatment cheap and effective. “From a standing start, we’ve reached around 65,000 children,” Martyn says. “We’re really proud of that.”

But as the organization grew, Martyn and his co-founder noticed a shift in the ecosystem. Other NGOs, spurred in part by positive evaluations from GiveWell, were starting similar interventions. Rather than compete, Clear Solutions adapted. “We didn’t want to duplicate efforts just to claim credit. We wanted to make a difference counterfactually. So we’re now focusing more on partnerships and layering ORS distribution onto existing health infrastructure.”

Martyn says his background at Google translated well to this new space. “I was always operating in complex systems with lots of unknowns, just like now,” he says. Skills in strategic thinking, people management, data analysis, and navigating ambiguity were useful. His tech skills, which were “pretty mediocre” by Google standards, became more advanced in a nonprofit context. He also credits his co-founder Charlie with covering essential gaps, bringing both medical and public health expertise. 

Running a global health charity while raising two kids is challenging, especially given the sleep deprivation in early parenthood. Travel is a challenge too, with Charlie taking on more of the fieldwork in Nigeria so that Martyn can remain home. But the flexibility of entrepreneurship has also been a huge advantage, “I do school pickups a couple days a week. I work from home. In many ways, it’s eased our day-to-day life.”

Martyn also took a substantial pay cut, going back to his 2004 graduate salary. “It’s a rewind of 21 years of pay increases,” he jokes. But he doesn’t feel regret. “For me, the loss in earnings has been more than compensated by the sense of meaning and fulfilment. I feel like I’m doing the right thing with my career.”

He’s also found that being mid-career was an asset. With a strong skill base and financial stability, he could take a calculated risk. “People often let loss aversion stop them. But if you can tolerate a pay cut, you can try something new. And if it doesn’t work, you can often go back.”

Today, Martyn is more comfortable than ever with uncertainty. “I used to think of my career like a tower, something quite narrow. The further I got, the more constrained I was. But it doesn’t have to be like that. I’ve realized I have more options than I thought.” Having worked in both tech and global health, he also now gets to work at a rare intersection. “There are lots of people in tech and lots in global health. But not many who have worked in both.”

Martyn’s advice to others considering a mid-career pivot: 

“You don’t need everything figured out. If you’ve been successful in one environment, you probably have more transferable skills than you think. Just don’t let fear or lost salary keep you from something that could be far more fulfilling.”