Eric Gastfriend

Background and interests

I became interested in utilitarian ethics, especially Peter Singer’s writings, around the age of 14. I’m now 25 years old and have been vegan for 10 years. I graduated from Brown a year ago, and have been working as the General Manager of Happy Cloud, a tech start-up, since then. I’ve been accepted into the Harvard Business School class of 2015.

I currently give at least 10% of my income to charity, but I would like to give much more than that. My goal is that in 20 years I’ll be spending 10% and donating 90%.

Career plans

My goal is to dream big, succeed as a tech entrepreneur, and eventually donate the money to help alleviate poverty in the developing world.

Causes I support

• Global poverty: Improving health
• Animal welfare: Ending factory farming
• Meta-activities: Building the effective altruist movement

My high impact activities

• Donating money
• Earning to give

Donation pledge