Simon Sällström
Bio
Born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 6th 1996. I grew up in Högdalen, a working-class area in southern Stockholm famous for its A-team members, Ebba Grön and (basically) the place where Spotify founder Daniel Ek grew up (he grew up in Rågsved, the next stop on the subway line). After moving to Örby where my parents still live and completing my primary education at Sturebyskolan, I went on a one-year exchange in Shanghai, China. So from September 2012 to June 2013, I spent my days reading Wikipedia articles, Plato’s republic and memorising combinations of lines drawn in clever ways (i.e. I studied mandarin) at CaoYang No.2 high school. My year in China taught me to really appreciate how hard my Chinese peers had to work compared to my Swedish ones. Even the hard work required to do well in the sciences program (natur svenska sektionen) at Kungsholmens gymnasium in Stockholm was nothing compared to what the Chinese students had to struggle through. My time at ‘KG’ (as it is called) was great and I was a member of the debate society, the political association and the student newspaper KZINE as their webmaster (I successfully managed to not crash the website, yay).
I’ve always been more interested in people and society so the political science and economics program (politices kandidatprogram) at Lund University was a natural choice for me. It was far away from home, I loved the old architecture of the city and they had an exchange program with the University of California. I picked up competitive debating again whilst letting the dream of going on an exchange to UC Berkeley motivate me to work hard.
Fall 2017 came and I applied to the exchange. After a long strenuous process I got an email on April 12th. I was one out of a handful of students from Lund who were going to UC Berkeley for one year! It was a great year by all metrics. I got a research assistant position, then a scholarship and then I co-authored an op-ed with my professor – all of which were a result of being at the right place at the right time, a genuine passion for what I was working on and ample preparation. My mantra? If you want good things to happen in your life, then work hard to be in a position where you can be lucky.
Fast forward. It’s fall 2019. I’m back in Lund to study some mathematics while I write my bachelor’s thesis in economics and master's program applications. This was the toughest year so far (academically). Never before had I studied 50-60 hours per week for extended periods. It was often easier to count the numbers that I did not study or write some application than the other way around. By January 2020, I was pretty exhausted and had begun experiencing some issues sleeping. I’ve been careful with balancing work and other things ever since. After all, what’s the endgame if not the life you have right now?
I applied to numerous universities but it was on March 25th that I received the offer that I really cared about. The first line said: “Thank you for your application for the Master of Philosophy in Economics which we have now considered.” Skip. “We are very pleased…” and so I was accepted to the MPhil in Economics at the University of Oxford.
What have I been up to at Oxford (apart from meeting boatloads of interesting people)? I’ve joined the Oxford University Table Tennis club, gotten a mentor from E3G as part of the sustainability mentorship programme and joined the Oxford Society for International Development.
After graduating with a masters in economics from Oxford in July 2022, I decided against going on the traditional 9-5 route in the City of London to move around money to make more money for people who already have plenty of money… Instead, I launched a charity
DirectEd Development Foundation is a charitable organisation whose purpose is to propel economic growth and develop and deliver evidence-based, highly scalable and cost-effective bootcamps designed for under-resourced high-potential students in Africa, preparing them for remote employment by equipping them with the most sought-after digital and soft skills on the market and thereby realise their potential as leaders of Africa’s digital transformation.
How others can help me
I am looking for grant givers to support our foundation, and for passionate interns who are interested in what we do!
How I can help others
I have done a masters in economics at Oxford. Here are my key interest areas (happy to chat about them!): the future of work, climate change's relationship to capitalism and economic development! :)
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Internship / board of trustees!
My name is Simon Sällström, after graduating with a masters in economics from Oxford in July 2022, I decided against going on the traditional 9-5 route in the City of London to move around money to make more money for people who already have plenty of money… Instead, I launched a charity
DirectEd Development Foundation is a charitable organisation whose mission is to propel economic growth and develop and deliver evidence-based, highly scalable and cost-effective bootcamps to under-resourced high-potential students in Africa, preparing them for remote employment by equipping them with the most sought-after digital and soft skills on the market and thereby realise their potential as leaders of Africa’s digital transformation.
I'm looking for passionate people in the EA community to join me and my team!
We are mainly looking for two unpaid positions to fill right now: interns and trustees. The latter is quite an important role
I am not entirely sure how to best go about this which is why I am writing this short comment here. Any advice?
Here's what I have done so far in terms of information about the internship position and application form: https://directed.notion.site/Job-board-3a6585f2175a456bb4f3d1149cfddba2
Here is what we have for the trustees (work in progress): https://directed.notion.site/Trustee-Role-and-Responsibilities-115d46fd04d94bd1a7061ca5d00f8f71
Happy to take any and all advice:)
What is your goal? i.e. what are you optimising for? :)
Internship / board of trustees!
My name is Simon Sällström, after graduating with a masters in economics from Oxford in July 2022, I decided against going on the traditional 9-5 route in the City of London to move around money to make more money for people who already have plenty of money… Instead, I launched a charity
DirectEd Development Foundation is a charitable organisation whose mission is to propel economic growth and develop and deliver evidence-based, highly scalable and cost-effective bootcamps to under-resourced high-potential students in Africa, preparing them for remote employment by equipping them with the most sought-after digital and soft skills on the market and thereby realise their potential as leaders of Africa’s digital transformation.
I'm looking for passionate people in the EA community to join me and my team!
We are mainly looking for two unpaid positions to fill right now: interns and trustees. The latter is quite an important role
I am not entirely sure how to best go about this which is why I am writing this short comment here. Any advice?
Here's what I have done so far in terms of information about the internship position and application form: https://directed.notion.site/Job-board-3a6585f2175a456bb4f3d1149cfddba2
Here is what we have for the trustees (work in progress): https://directed.notion.site/Trustee-Role-and-Responsibilities-115d46fd04d94bd1a7061ca5d00f8f71
Happy to take any and all advice:)
Hey Felix!
Thanks for the many good comments:) As you know, there are so many things going on with a charity startup and difficult trade-offs to make. One of them being proper tracking against our roadmap and communicating what we're doing (as opposed to focusing on doing), especially at an early stage like this.
- The playlist order is now corrected!
- (keeping in mind my caveat) I've had a look at some of the drive links and updated. We'll use PDF + Notion upload from now on so that we don't rely on individual team members (who likely ran out of drive space for his own documents but I'll have to ask Moses about it).
- When it comes to risks of proof of stake and NFTs, I'd rather mention those in a more general risk assessment report (which has had low priority status). I'll look into adding that for the Q2 2023 OKRs!
- The most recent proposal is the one for F8. Let me be very candid on this one though. Projecting 12+ months forward without virtually any experience on the ground in Ethiopia nor with dapp development was more like an exercise in wishful thinking than a proper and well-informed roadmap. The F8 one was more realistic. I'll be making a page where you can track progress against the Roadmap. Right now we have a Progress page with OKRs but the link to the roadmap isn't very well made. https://directed.notion.site/Progress-Updates-81f92ecebefb4f289e80e1703ff73d2a
- Just to give you my background on this. I met with the Project manager for the Ethiopia deal when I was in Addis two months ago. However, I lack the full technical background to explain all the details of DID/SSI/Atala Prism but I understand it on a high level, and more than the vast majority (if not all) of tech journalists who cover Cardano.
The Cigi-article is unfortunately written by someone who has actually no clue about what Self-Sovereign Identifiers (SSI) are and what the Ethiopia project really is about. Just to bring up the most egregious confusion that the authors illustrates: they mistakenly believe that SSI is a blockchain identity technology (and that the credentials platform IOHK has been contracted to build is going to have personal data on-chain). It is not. It is not a blockchain identity system (unlike so-called Soul-bound tokens). It is decentralised public key infrastructure. Blockchain only as a tiny part of it. For those interested in learning more about self-sovereign identifiers (AKA Decentralised Identifiers). Here is the official W3C standards recommendation for those who want to learn what it is, approved in July 2022 https://www.w3.org/2022/07/pressrelease-did-rec.html.en
The QZ article on similarly showing very superficial understanding of the technology. The statement "The project will build digital identity solutions on the Cardano blockchain. " is not factually correct. I am happy to elaborate.
NB, Atala PRISM is not a completed product. It is in development and is not even yet registered as an official DID. - "Let's hope (?) this does not fail too badly." I hope you don't mind me being honest but I think this comment was a bit unnecessary.
We are doing the piloting of our bootcamps and the end-to-end on-chain scholarship granting in the next month and during Q1-Q2 this year!
Please do sign up to our monthly newsletter to get quick updates on that https://directed.notion.site/Newsletter-signup-34e6bced04534d3981ece8312caea717
After graduating with a masters in economics from Oxford in July 2022, I’ve been a charity entrepreneur. This is my uncut journey on that path Follow me on my journey as I document everything behind the scenes of being a charity startup founder!
YouTube playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLatl23CKLmapNvrypAYgxOHwevQY231Oq
Twitter @simonsallstrom
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF OUR CHARITY?
DirectEd Development Foundation - direct donations for education. Our purpose is to identify high potential students in sub Saharan Africa, starting in Kenya and Ethiopia, and facilitate the resources needed for them to successfully enter a career as remote software engineers, all evaluated rigorously through close partnerships with academic researchers.
We are innovating the use of emergent technologies in order to reduce costs, increase transparency and empower our students. Through the use of self-sovereign identifiers, we enable students to take agency over their identity and to build reputation. The combination of this type of privacy preserving digital identity infrastructure with smart contracts is what enables peer-smart contract-to-peer distribution of scholarship funds conditional on students reaching learning milestones, thus enhancing accountability and trust and removing costly middlemen and the leakages associated with which.
https://directed.dev/ https://linktr.ee/directeddevelopment
Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Twitter, email, pigeon mail, snail mail… you name it!:) https://uk.linkedin.com/in/simon-sällström-3659b616b
Hi! Do you take in founders with existing high impact (potentially) organisations that have already in the bootstrapping phase?