My week with The Altruists
A Netflix drama series called The Altruists drops next month, profiling the rise and fall of effective-altruists-turned-crypto-scammers SBF and Caroline Ellison. In their (dis)honor, I’d like to celebrate some other Altruists as I reflect on an effective altruism conference and retreat.
No AI was used [harmed?] in the making of this post : )
This week I attended the Effective Altruism Global conference in NYC and then a smaller Effective Career Ecosystem Summit.
The former was a big-tent event of 1,500+ that includes everybody from the CEO of The Center for Effective Altruism (CEA) to university students or retirees with no prior knowledge of EA beyond some interest in certain causes like global health or animal welfare (EA is more a set of ideas and a highly distributed community rather than one particular organization or movement, but there are a few rather central players including CEA); the latter was a retreat specifically for ~25 leaders of organizations that focus on career advising for global social impact.
Over five days, I had the great pleasure of speaking with dozens of the most amazing and inspiring people I will meet all year.
This is a feature of the format of these events: instead of talks where everybody listens to a lecture that will be available on YouTube minutes later, most of the time is spent in back-to-back one-on-one meetings, booked using a very dating-app-like platform complete with short bios., interests, and AI recommendations for good matches. It can be exhausting, but it’s very good fun!
I therefore share the story of my weekend with these altruists through the stories of the people I met, with the hope that they may inspire you to lead lives of deeper meaning and more positive impact, as they have for me.
I started Saturday morning bright and early speaking with Nicholas, a senior at Princeton. He studies literature, international affairs, and attention, and helps run his school’s Moral Ambition chapter. They provide ambitious, talented university students with socially beneficial internship alternatives to the “Bermuda Triangle” that currently sucks up and rarely relinquishes most young Ivy League talent: management consulting, corporate law, and investment banking. We bonded over curriculum design, and I hope to get Nicholas in front of some of our students this summer for a session on the moral education we can gain from analyzing literature (a passion of his!).
Next was Nora, the founder and ED of a youth activism summer camp. For years she has helped idealistic teenagers develop their skills and identities as leaders for social change. She’s one of those people who so clearly just gets kids, and she absolutely pumped me up about the work we get to do with students at such a formative time in their lives.
Later, Li-Lian and I talked about the insanely impressive scaling she’s helped lead at BlueDot Impact, one of the world’s top pipelines of talent to AI safety. She’s an efficiency, strategy, and theory of change pro! Seriously: 20 minutes talking to her conservatively saved me 20+ hours of misdirected effort, and probably way more.
One major upside of in-person conferences when you work remotely is that you get to meet digital collaborators in person:
I had a wonderful time and learned much more than our previous Zoom calls have allowed from Lauren and her work mentoring college students with Impact First; Kevin’s special projects at Rethink Priorities and clever side-project helping Ohio taxpayers direct money at no cost to them to educational scholarships and high impact charities; Tyler’s work making Middlebury the most successful college in the country at getting students to taking giving pledges to Giving What We Can (> 300!); Ryan’s new organization Momentum, which helps talented under- and recent graduates find high impact opportunities in animal welfare.
One of my favorite meetings of the day was with Niamh, a Partnerships Associate at Giving What We Can. In April 2025 Niamh cold-emailed me while still in university: “I have read through your FAQs and am keen to support the work, and would love to get involved if possible.” She quickly became an important part of our impact and growth, and it was so cool to see how she’s now leveraging her learning and leadership with us in her role scaling charitable, effective giving.
Amidst all these planned meetings, serendipity struck too.
Get Jonah Boucher’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My biggest smile of the weekend was surely when I bumped into Thomas, who I met several years back at some EA event. Thomas is an inspiring educator who runs a club helping middle schoolers build a strong moral identity, and his annual Skinny Dip Day fundraiser has raised $62,000 for the Fistula Foundation, restoring health and dignity for nearly 100 women.
I also started up a random conversation with Cliff, a retired technologist now focused on effective giving. We bonded over our interest in math teaching pedagogy before realizing we live within a mile of one another in Vermont! We’ll of course be meeting up soon to keep the great conversation going.
The highlight of the day was convening alumni of the youth impact acceletrators that I run (Leaf and Non-Trivial).
We had around 15 alumni from the past several years in attendance, including two who are also current staff members and some of the folks I speak to most often in my daily life — but had never met in person! It was so rewarding and fun to see the community we’ve built enjoy time together live in person, and powerful to hear first-hand of all the incredible altruistic work these students are pursuing around the world.
Dinners with some of my NYC friends — unrelated to the conference — were also reminders of the important altruistic work that good folks are undertaking beyond the walls and affiliations of any particular community: social work with struggling students, prison reform, night shifts volunteering for the suicide hotline, international diplomacy, justice and representation for all, legal aid for immigrants, and all the little ways my friends show up for one another and for their communities. One of the best take-aways from an EA conference is indeed that altruism is everywhere once you’re looking for it!
These were 48 whirlwind hours of hurried hellos and quick meetings. Thankfully, the retreat to which I traveled next was a much slower pace; we shared meals, campfires, and deeper conversations around the continued chats and workshops.
As at the conference, I was able to spend quality time with collaborators I’d only previously known online. I particularly loved an evening hang with Kennan, a director of the university groups program at the Center for Effective Altruism. We swapped stories from our teaching days and I learned of his prior expressions of deep altruism through activism and familial caretaking. He’s got a heart of gold that powers his contagious passion and vision (it was no surprise to learn he was a personal trainer!).
I also had some meaningful chats with Simon, director of High Impact Medicine. After a career in pediatric medicine, he now supports the next generation of doctors to find the most neglected, important opportunities to use their talents and training for positive impact. In both our one-on-ones and in large groups, he expertly combined calm and patient listening with forceful conviction. I felt myself a more grounded, more dedicated person just by bearing witness to his presence.
I shared a Mastermind Session (a listening and problem-solving activity that helps you better understand a bottleneck in your work) and a meal with JD and Dominic, who lead Christians for Impact. It was fascinating to explore the differences in our worldviews and motivations, yet notice how they have led us to such similar professional pursuits, helping people better align their lives with their deepest values. One of the most powerful single moments of the weekend for me was when JD — with the earnest, whole-hearted eye contact only a special few can pull off — told me after our conversation, “This weekend was better because you were here.”
There are so many other people and moments I could mention: Roy’s story of moving from lucrative but meaningless investment banking to starting an org. dedicating to helping AI go well for humanity; the wisdom Rocky and Tom bring to their career advising at Probably Good; the incredible organization building, vision, and drive of Nina at High Impact Professionals and Sebastian at Kickstarting for Good; Kathryn’s support of underrepresented groups with Magnify Mentoring; and so much more.
This week was certainly peppered with many of the “sanctimonious EA weirdo stereotypes”: The apologetic “NOT VEGAN” post-it on the snack table muffins, 10% income pledge stickers on seemingly every water bottle, vigorous debates about spreadsheet multipliers and counterfactual discounts, population ethics dinner table small talk, etc.
Weirdos we may have all in our own ways been, but most importantly it was so clear that everybody I met this week were also, deeply, altruists. They’ve eached embraced a universal, timeless human instinct and practice as a core aspect of their identity, and engage in a serious, thoughtful pursuit of its expression in their personal and professional lives.
I spent the final few hours of the retreat at a picnic table under the sunshine and fall foliage with Gergő, Guillaume, and Erik. Each has led their national effective altruism group, building communities that help people find meaningful, altruistic projects and careers.
Our conversation moved smoothly from the mundane (how can we not yet make laptop screens that you can see in the sun?!) to — in most company— the weird (if AGI timelines are plausibly short, should we bother saving for retirement?). They were each kind, funny, thoughtful, and open; relaxingly normal; interestingly weird.
Amidst all the suffering and risk we’re working to prevent, I felt briefly a deep and powerful peace.
I was surrounded then — and all week — by good people, doing good work.
May we all!
