Project summary

Hi! I'm Jen. I'm a former Product Operations Manager at Google, who left to take a sabbatical and transition into dedicating my labor towards making sure AI goes well for humanity. I've been involved with EA since 2021 through EA Chicago and EA NYC; in addition to co-leading EA@Alphabet, and now EA SF. I want to dedicate my career towards suffering alleviation.

From Feb-Apr, I was covered by a Coefficient Giving Career Transition Grant ($12.3k) for a few things: running EA SF, hosting social events at Mox, and offering pro-bono Ops support to an AI Security Accelerator.

Now, I am in a 2nd leg of the Explore-Exploit journey and am awaiting grants from EA Infrastructure Fund and Coefficient Giving. I am awaiting reimbursement of EA SF expenses. EA IF just released an update that they are running into capacity constraints, so I don't expect a response soon.

I am seeking a 3 month living stipend (June-Aug) to a) continue working on these projects and not multi-task/prioritize the traditional job hunt and b) motivate me to put in the best effort onto these projects instead of Keeping The Lights On/Bare minimum (for example: my efforts into EA SF can range from subsisting to thriving depending on my good will capacity).

• Note: I did work in Tech and have levers of savings, but relying on it while outputting work fails the objectives of a & b.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Here are the current projects:

1) Effective Altruism San Francisco (50%)

• Organize bi weekly events for community and maintain a curated collection of EA/AIS events happening in the Bay Area (349 subscribers, ~20-30 average attendee count)

  • We’ve gotten a handful of attendees that join from out-of-town in their visit

• Send out curated monthly newsletter (561 subscribers , 58% open rate, 18% click rate)

• Offering 1-1 chats or career coaching, or EA SF ecosystem support (4-6 requests per month, growing) + warm intros matchmaking

  • Onboarding members who are new to SF

In partnership with BlueDot & Mox, I am coordinating & organizing a 2-part event series in July for AIS Field-Building:

- Breaking Barriers Hackathon SF
- AIS Career Fair & Founders Summit 

2) AI Safety Career Coaching (Intro + Recurring) (30%)

After a semi-viral Linkedin post, I coached 32+ professionals in the month of June varying in range of background and stages of the AIS journey (Initial Analysis EA Forum post). I’ve collated a larger directory of ~50 professionals who are interested in AIS.

I learned to filter out individuals who lack context to focus more on people in the ecosystem who need support through either:
a) help weed out the signal from the noise on what to do & how to navigate AIS upskilling or job hunting,
b) provide an intro to the AIS ecosystem - how its different from traditional industry, or
c) be an advisor to validate or check their current theory of change.

• I've received consistent unprompted feedback on helpfulness.

Some results within the month:

• 2 headhunt connections leading to speed running a potential candidate,

• experienced professional partook in the Breaking Barriers Hackathon + introduced to EA UK,

• ~5+ new attributed applicants to BlueDot,

• [unknown #] applicants to Successif, BlueDot advising, 80k advising, Steadrise, HIP, CEA Bootcamp

• Ops candidate reached the later stages for a role - results tbd,

• another sr. professional attended Manifest to network within AIS,

• One applied to Surplus.dev

• ~2 new members introduced to AIS Founders community

• 5 warm introductions: to experienced AIS researcher, Biosecurity community member, and AIS Operations professional, AI policy transitioner

3) Parents for Safe AI (20%)

• a budding project with Simon N. - potential to be akin to AI Safety Awareness Project Resource Hub or Mothers Against Drunk Driving-esque movement.

• build out information architecture of resource hub to ultimately inform and advocate policy actions through Parents voting bloc

• Simon will be able to in November, I will be driving a bit of it now.

How will this funding be used?

This will fund a living stipend in bridging the gap to hear back from funders. If I get a renewed CG grant (where I asked for 4 months), I'd be happy to either return the funds or re-grant them.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

For EA SF, I have volunteer support from an individual D.C. and advisory from my predecessor + a partnership with Mox. For the Hackathon, I'm in contact with Josh L from BlueDot.