Meet the team
Table of Contents
Primary staff
Niel Bowerman
CEO
Before joining 80,000 Hours, Niel served as Assistant Director at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, and co-founded the Centre for Effective Altruism. He holds a doctorate in physics from Oxford, and served as a climate science advisor to the Office of the President of the Maldives.
Alex Holness-Tofts
Headhunting Lead
Alex joined 80,000 Hours after working as a talent scout at the AI Safety Institute and doing some applied AI safety research. Before that, he worked on building the effective altruism community, including founding a high school outreach program on existential risk and working at the Centre for Effective Altruism.
Alice De Gennaro
Business Operations Associate
Alice received a bachelor's degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and then went on to work as a research assistant at UCL. After engaging with 80,000 Hours' services, she made a career switch into operations work at high impact organisations. Outside work she loves to cook (and eat), practice yoga, and swim.
Arden Koehler
Interim Director of Web
Before coming to 80,000 Hours, Arden got a PhD in philosophy from New York University, with a specialisation in ethics and attitudes toward time.
Balázs Rapi
Business Operations Specialist
Balázs holds a JD from a Hungarian law school and worked in law and consulting, supporting both public and private sector clients. He likes to spend his free time reading philosophy and practicing jiu-jitsu.
Bella Forristal
Director of Growth
Before joining 80,000 Hours, Bella worked in movement building at Effective Altruism Oxford, and was part of the co-founding team of the Global Challenges Project. She studied Classics & Philosophy at Oxford, with a particular interest in ethics and non-human animals.
Brenton Mayer
COO
Brenton previously worked as a medical doctor before coming to 80,000 Hours in 2017. He co-founded the Run to Better Days and Effective Altruism Australia, non-profits promoting effective development aid for people living in extreme poverty. He takes table tennis way too seriously.
Callum Evans
People Operations Associate
Before joining 80,000 Hours, Callum worked on community building at Effective Altruism Oxford, and later co-founded Future Impact Group. He studied ancient history at Oxford, with an interest in civilisational collapse. Outside work, he enjoys chess, tennis, and Paolo Nutini.
Chana Messinger
Head of Video
Chana received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's in quantitative social science. She previously worked as a high school mathematics teacher, and then on the Centre for Effective Altruism's Community Health team. Outside of work, she is a huge puzzler: crosswords, cryptics and more.
Cody Fenwick
Research Analyst
Cody received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and studied ethics and public policy to earn his master's. He worked for years as a staff writer and editor at various news outlets and published on a range of topics, including politics, science, and media. Before joining 80,000 Hours, he was a happy recipient of 80,000 Hours' career advising.
Conor Barnes
Job Board Product Engineer
Conor joined 80,000 Hours as a software engineer and now works as the job board product engineer. Before working at 80,000 Hours, Conor worked at a startup and as a cataloguer at a library. When he's not programming, he's writing short stories and poetry.
Daniel Dewey
Advisor
Daniel has been working in AI x-risk since 2011. Before joining 80,000 Hours, he was an independent AI alignment researcher, a program officer at Open Philanthropy, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, a software engineer at Google, and an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. A few favourites: Orthogonal (book), The Big Short (movie), Deadwood (TV), Hollow Knight (video game).
Eli Nathan
Head of Business Operations (office and metrics)
Eli joined 80,000 Hours after working at the Centre for Effective Altruism, originally as the lead organiser for the EA Global conference series and then later as the Interim Head of Operations. Before that he was an operations assistant at Open Philanthropy, and came across EA in Oxford in 2016, where he was involved in various community building projects.
Huon Porteous
Advising Manager
Huon studied maths and philosophy at the Australian National University, where he was a core organiser for the university EA club. He then spent a year working in management consulting at a boutique firm before joining 80,000 Hours. In his spare time, he enjoys pole dancing, bouldering, and board games.
Inés Fernandez
Business Operations Associate
Inés joined 80,000 Hours after completing her undergraduate degree in computational social science. During university, she interned at Deloitte and was a community manager for SERI.
Jenna Peters
Chief of Staff for the 1on1 Team
Before 80,000 Hours, Jenna worked as a project manager at the Centre for Effective Altruism and a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at the Center for Global Women's Health Technologies at Duke University. Jenna graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a BS in neuroscience.
Jess Binksmith
Chief of Staff
Jess joined 80,000 Hours as an Operations Specialist and then moved into the Chief of Staff role. Before joining, she worked as the Athletic Union President at the University of St Andrews. She graduated with an MA in philosophy. Outside of work, she enjoys playing board games and badminton.
Jørgen Ljønes
Head of Business Operations (finance and admin)
Jørgen cofounded Effective Altruism Norway and Gi Effektivt, a Norwegian donation platform for GiveWell-recommended charities, while studying. After graduating from NTNU with an MSc in Industrial Economics and Technology Management, he worked as a Community Builder at EA Norway, and later Managing Director of Gi Effektivt. He's interested in strategy games both on tabletops and on screens.
Laura González Salmerón
Advisor
Laura joined us after three years of working as a buy-side equity analyst. In a previous life, she was a PhD student at Oxford, where she researched representations of science and technology in fiction. Outside 80,000 Hours she writes, hosts a Spanish podcast, and hoards games she never has time to play.
Lauren Kuhns
Content Associate
Lauren did her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focused on the effects of chronic substance use on motivational circuits of the brain. In her free time, she enjoys doing yoga, mountain hiking, reading fiction, and hanging out with dogs.
Luisa Rodriguez
Podcast Host
Before joining us, Luisa was Will MacAskill's Chief of Staff at the Forethought Foundation. Before that, she conducted cause prioritisation research at Rethink Priorities and the Future of Humanity Institute, and cost-effectiveness analysis for nonprofit and government programs at ImpactMatters, Innovations for Poverty Action, and GiveWell.
Matt Beard
Advisor
Before joining 80,000 Hours, Matt was a legislative staffer on the National Security Committee in Canada. He previously managed a Member of Parliament's legislative office, worked as a policy analyst and grantmaker in the civil service, and received an MA in political science. Matt is now based in Washington, DC.
Michelle Hutchinson
Director of the 1on1 Programme
Michelle holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where her thesis was on global priorities research. While completing that, she did the operational set-up of the Centre for Effective Altruism and then became Executive Director of Giving What We Can. She came to us fresh from setting up the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford.
Molly Webb
People Operations Associate
Before joining 80k, Molly founded and ran a multi-location music school based in California specialising in evidence-based voice lessons and employing a network of teachers trained in her curriculum. She holds a BA from Columbia University in English and a variety of advanced certifications in voice science.
Nik Mastroddi
Marketer
After graduating in Egyptology from the University of Cambridge, Nik worked as a freelance designer for non-profit and cultural projects before joining the student recruitment team in Graduate Admissions at the University of Oxford. She worked in marketing and outreach at Oxford for over a decade before coming to 80,000 Hours.
Rob Wiblin
Director of Podcasting
Rob won a scholarship to study genetics and economics at the Australian National University, graduating top of his class and being named Young Alumnus of the Year in 2015. He worked as a research economist in various Australian Government agencies, before moving to the UK to work at the Centre for Effective Altruism, where he was Research Director and then Executive Director, before moving to 80,000 Hours. He was also a founding board member of Animal Charity Evaluators and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community.
Sam Haskell
Systems Analyst
Before joining 80,000 Hours, Sam worked in various roles at charities and educational institutions. He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. Outside of work, he enjoys philosophy, reading, and art.
Sashika Coxhead
Head of People Operations
Before working at 80,000 Hours, Sash was a junior doctor in London. She graduated from King's College London in 2018, where she received multiple awards for academic excellence and did research on HIV that was published in Nature Microbiology.
Sudhanshu Kasewa
Advisor
Sudhanshu has been a consultant with giant multinationals, a corporate soft-skills trainer, a research engineer at a startup, and a PhD student in robotics. He's worked in a variety of contexts including manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare, and has degrees in mathematics, management, and machine learning.
Valerie Richmond
Principal Web Engineer
Valerie received degrees in computer science from MIT, where she researched self-driving car safety models. She then worked on software to speed up US clinical trials. She's interested in ethics, weightlifting, dogs, and the outdoors.
Zac Richardson
Systems Analyst
Before coming to 80,000 Hours, Zac studied Social and Cultural Psychology at LSE where he researched public perceptions of AI risk and democratic decision-making. He's worked in research management, tutored philosophy, and marketed spices. Outside work Zac enjoys loud music and spicy food.
Zershaaneh Qureshi
Researcher
Zershaaneh received a master's degree in mathematics and philosophy from the University of Oxford. After spending three years providing market intelligence to the global water industry, she made a career shift to focus on AI safety research. Outside of 80,000 Hours, she loves art galleries and Punjabi cooking.
Founders
Benjamin Todd
President and Co-founder
Ben managed 80,000 Hours while it grew from a lecture, to a student society, to the organisation it is today. Before 80,000 Hours, he was the first undergraduate to intern as an analyst at a top investment fund. He has a 1st from Oxford in Physics and Philosophy, has published in Climate Physics, once kick-boxed for Oxford, and speaks Chinese, badly.
Will MacAskill
Co-founder
Will is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford, focusing on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism, the foundations of effective altruism, and the ethics of future generations. He co-founded the nonprofits Giving What We Can, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and 80,000 Hours. He is the author of Doing Good Better, Moral Uncertainty, and What We Owe The Future, which we discussed with him on our podcast.
Freelancers
Ben Cordell
Audio Engineering Lead
Ben is an electronic music artist and audio engineer. He received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, focusing on double bass, music technology, and audio engineering. When he's not working, Ben loves making music and playing with his two cats.
Katy Moore
Podcast Production Coordinator
Katy holds a BA in History from Oregon State University and a Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of Alberta. Previously she's worked as a plain language specialist and content coordinator in the areas of public legal information and mental health services. When she's not working, you can find her chasing warm weather to go on nature hikes and canoe trips with her slightly neurotic dog.
Our Board of Directors
The long-term members of our board of directors are still being finalised.
Our External Advisors
These are some of the external experts we consult in our research and decision-making processes.
Dr Greg Lewis
External Advisor
Greg is an independent researcher who focuses on biorisk and superforecasting for Good Judgement Inc. He previously worked at the Future of Humanity Institute and has a PhD in Mathematical Biology from the University of Oxford. He has guest-written several articles on our site about biorisk and medical careers and consulted on much of our biorisk and COVID-19 related work.
Dr Rohin Shah
External Advisor
Rohin co-leads the AI alignment team at Google DeepMind. He previously earned a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, where he studied at the Center for Human Compatible AI. He's written widely about alignment in his newsletter, and has previously spoken on our podcast.
Dr Toby Ord
External Advisor
Toby is a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University, an expert in global prioritisation, and has been repeatedly covered in the international media for promoting cost-effective philanthropy and founding Giving What We Can. He is the author of The Precipice, which he discussed on our podcast.
Prof. Hilary Greaves
External Advisor
Hilary is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Director of the Global Priorities Institute. Her research focuses on issues of global priorisation, foundational issues in consequentialism, interpersonal aggregation, population ethics, moral uncertainty, and the interface between ethics and economics. She has been interviewed about these topics on our podcast, and joined our governing board in 2019.
Peter Hartree
External Advisor
Peter is CEO of TYPE III AUDIO. He previously worked in various roles at 80,000 Hours.