Arthur has been engaged with EA since before the movement settled on a name, and reoriented from academics/medicine toward supporting highly impactful work. He has since developed operations skills by working with EA-affiliated organizations and in the private sector. Alongside EA interests, Arthur finds inspiration in nerdy art about heroes trying to save the universe.
Thanks Jeff!! I've been waiting for this exact news for 23 years.
As a college undergrad I ate an obscene amount of egg whites and whey protein. I also regularly genetically engineered yeast (and E.coli) to create small batches of protein for x-ray crystallography. I thought it would be a fairly simple engineering problem to create these proteins at scale in a way that would be more resource efficient and require less animal suffering.
I considered trying to go the entrepreneurial route and develop this myself; given how long its taken to make this happen and how slowly the cost has come down (Perfect Day has been doing for years for whey what Every now does for ovalbumin), it seems like the engineering side is much more difficult than I could have imagined. I'm still optimistic that these process will improve to the point that they can provide these proteins at a much cheaper price point than the animal sourced versions. If anyone has any info on the constraints here, or wants to start a prediction market on when the products will reach cost parity, I'd love to see it!
Hey Frances, I’m so sorry you had to go through all this. I’m impressed and grateful that you’ve shared your experience. I hope that it leads to positive changes at CEA, in EA more broadly, and just generally in the world because it’s good when these stories are brought to light.
I miss working with you all the time. When you were here, and after you left, I elected to listen to the women around you and not try to inquire about what happened or reach out with uninformed and unsolicited offers to help. But now that it’s out in the open, I hope you know that I’m here for you if there’s anything I can do to support you.
[The above is copied from my comment on Frances's Substack.]
I'm adding a comment here as well because this post now has my blog intro post listed in the "Mentioned in" section. I forgot that this was a thing. I asked Frances if she was ok with me linking her post because I wanted to signal boost her (and she said I was definitely welcome to do so); I really didn't intend for any traffic from her post to be directed to mine. But now that it's there, I want to add more gratitude to Frances for helping inspire me to try to actively help more and start writing publicly.
[Disclosure: I work at CEA. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA]
EAGx and Summit events are coming up, and we're looking for organizers for more!
Applications for EAGxCDMX (Mexico City, 20–22 March), EAGxNordics (Stockholm, 24–26 April), and EAGxDC (Washington DC, 2–3 May) are all open! These will be the largest regional-focused events in their respective areas, and are aimed at serving those already engaged with EA or doing related professional work. EAGx events are networking-focused conferences designed to foster strong connections within their regional communities.
If you’d like to apply to join the organizing team for a 2026 Bay Area EAGx (date and venue to be confirmed, targeting August–September), please apply via this form. Full details can be found here.
We also have applications or direct registrations open for EA Summits in Helsinki (28 Feb), Hong Kong (7 March), and Jakarta (19 April), with more to be announced soon. Summits welcome existing EA community members but they also include more introductory content, making them a great way for newer, EA-curious professionals to learn about EA and explore potential opportunities.. Please keep them in mind to recommend to friends and colleagues who you think could benefit from in-person exposure to EA ideas and the real people behind them.
If you are interested in hosting an EAGx or Summit in your city, or want to nominate an area for consideration, please fill out this form!
EAGx and Summit events are coming up, and we're looking for organizers for more!
Applications for EAGxCDMX (Mexico City, 20–22 March), EAGxNordics (Stockholm, 24–26 April), and EAGxDC (Washington DC, 2–3 May) are all open! These will be the largest regional-focused events in their respective areas, and are aimed at serving those already engaged with EA or doing related professional work. EAGx events are networking-focused conferences designed to foster strong connections within their regional communities.
If you’d like to apply to join the organizing team for a 2026 Bay Area EAGx (date and venue to be confirmed, targeting August–September), please apply via this form. Full details can be found here.
We also have applications or direct registrations open for EA Summits in Helsinki (28 Feb), Hong Kong (7 March), and Jakarta (19 April), with more to be announced soon. Summits welcome existing EA community members but they also include more introductory content, making them a great way for newer, EA-curious professionals to learn about EA and explore potential opportunities.. Please keep them in mind to recommend to friends and colleagues who you think could benefit from in-person exposure to EA ideas and the real people behind them.
If you are interested in hosting an EAGx or Summit in your city, or want to nominate an area for consideration, please fill out this form!
@ChanaMessinger I think it would be good to add Hank Green's interview with Nate and SciShow's entry!
Gearing up for announcement now! (Nov 22 on UCLA campus)
It's a great suggestion to be transparent about how CEA supports Summit and EAGx organizers. Many published event retrospectives include full cost breakdowns, but we haven't put out anything consolidated and I think you're right that it would be very helpful for potential organizers to sense check.
The main blocker for presenting this info is that events are all essentially one-offs. We've put together standardized resources to help each event team try to estimate their event's cost, but then we evaluate each event budget proposal independently. Our cross-event comparisons show large swings that depend on things like the city's cost-of-living and whether there are already financially supported EA community builders working in the region. A single incidental factor, e.g. a student on the organizing team who can book low-cost university space as the venue, can change the projected cost by 30% and be the difference between whether we believe an event will be cost-effective or not.
Some very rough numbers from events in 2024–2025 that might still help people considering applying to run an event:
More about volunteering, because it's one of the things I want to communicate most to potential organizers: as someone who personally volunteered significant time to EA community building, I recognize that this helped my own career path and I certainly don't want to stand in anyone's way if they want to make that choice. Event organizing is a great way to test one's fit for EA operations work and make connections in the EA professional network; one of my favorite elements of my job is to see organizers I've supported transition from the temporary work of event organization into full time careers in EA.
Being willing to volunteer is a signal of dedication that we take into account, and at the limited amounts we have to support Summits, reduced organizer pay can be the difference between being able to support an event or not. I want to be transparent about that, and also be very clear that we recognize that being able to volunteer is a privilege that most people don't have. I want to stress our aim that no one feel pressured to volunteer their time. The majority of our event organizers are paid a fair wage, and I want applicants to feel confident that they can apply to run events with the expectation of getting paid if that's best for them.
I really appreciate the value of reevaluating ideas from a beginner's mind and doing one's best to examine the status quo with as little bias as possible. That said, among the things to be evaluated at present when considering effective altruism include the existence of a community, professional network, funding, and momentum of active work. This all indicates the revealed preference of thousands of people that find motivation in the ideas and from other members. When trying to personally decide if "effective altruism still has a reason to exist?" one should take into account that it already does exist and provides resources that many people find valuable.
Along with many others, I don't find any incompatibility between work on AI (and other) x-risk and global health, because I know I'm uncertain about the future. If the probability of TAI within 10 years is, as I believe, somewhere between 20–80% (median 65%), and the probability of my GHWB donations helping people is ~95%, then it makes sense to prioritize both. The wider world understands the value of taking a portfolio approach to investing (e.g. I think a long recession is likely so I have more liquid assets than some recommend, but I still maintain a decent proportion of my worth in standard ETFs, and this is a "normal" way to invest). But EA is the only place I've found that "takes doing good under uncertainty" seriously enough to consider impact portfolios as a way to maximize good, rather than primarily as a way to ease investors' consciences while trying to generate returns.
There's also the EA Student Summit: London happening on April 5, applications open now!
The event is structured to benefit students but we'd love established EA professionals to attend as mentors or representatives for their orgs; there will be time for professional networking and a reception for mentors in addition to the time spent speaking with students.