I Am Not a Good Fit: Reflections on My Journey with EA and Global Priorities

Thank you so much for this kind and insightful message. I really resonate with what you’ve said. Like you, I see academia not just as a career but as a platform to shape future leaders. Many of our students come in with raw passion but little direction, and I believe one of the most meaningful things we can do is help channel that energy into impactful work. Your point that teaching can sometimes rival or even surpass direct EA roles in terms of influence is encouraging. It reframes the classroom as a multiplier of impact, which I find deeply motivating.

That said, one of the challenges in my context is that education in Nigeria is often weighed down by inadequate infrastructure and limited access to modern research tools. This makes it harder to fully unlock the potential of bright students who could otherwise thrive in global science and problem-solving spaces. Still, I believe even within these constraints, there is room to inspire, mentor, and connect students to broader opportunities. This is where I hope to make my strongest contribution within EA and beyond

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree that pivoting can be useful, but I also believe that what we’re building at the Center for Phage Biology and Therapeutics has a unique and powerful kind of impact.

I often imagine the scenario of a patient who has run out of antibiotic options and is at the brink of death. In that moment, the clinician, or even the patient’s family, reaches out to us, sends us the bacterial isolate, and within days we are able to identify a matching phage, purify it, and return it for therapeutic use. That is not theoretical impact, it is direct, life-saving intervention.

Beyond that, we are currently working on evaluating our phage-based vaccines. If we succeed, we will have built the capacity to rapidly design vaccines against a wide range of infections. This could mean moving from treating individual patients to preventing outbreaks entirely. To me, that is another dimension of impact that one can achieve within a career.

So while I understand the argument that funding availability can influence career trajectories, I think the deeper question is: should external funding constraints dictate what problems we dedicate our lives to solving? For me, the vision of saving lives through phage therapy and building a platform for rapid vaccine development is too important to abandon, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into current funding prioritie

Thank you for sharing this—it’s a fascinating idea. I haven’t read the detailed report you mentioned, but I’ve followed some of the broader discussions around mirror life. You’re right that conventional phages wouldn’t work against mirror bacteria because of the chirality mismatch. In theory, only “mirror phages” built from mirror-biological components could infect them.

The idea of mirror phages is interesting because, if mirror organisms were ever discovered or engineered, they might be immune to all our natural defenses and medical tools. In that context, mirror phages could represent one of the very few biological defenses available. Exploring that possibility would also stretch our understanding of what life could look like beyond Earth, which is scientifically exciting.

My concern, however, is twofold. First, the technical barrier is enormous—we don’t currently have the capacity to build entire mirror-biological systems. Second, and more importantly, creating self-replicating mirror entities—whether bacteria or phages—would carry profound risks. Once released, they would operate on completely different biochemistry, outside the checks and balances of our ecosystems. We could neither predict nor easily contain their behavior, because no existing biological process in our world could break them down. That means even if they posed no direct harm to us, they could persist indefinitely, occupying niches, competing for resources, or interacting with the environment in ways we cannot anticipate.

Another layer of complexity is that phages are natural genetic transducers—they move genes between organisms. If mirror phages were ever created, we cannot be certain how they might interact with ordinary bacteria. While direct gene transfer across chiral systems seems unlikely, biology has a way of surprising us, and even small, indirect interactions could have unforeseen consequences. This uncertainty makes their study both intriguing and potentially risky.

So while the concept of mirror phages is highly speculative, it is also deeply double-edged: they could be our only defense against mirror pathogens, but they also raise the possibility of introducing a form of life that sits entirely beyond our current safety frame

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this thoughtful comment. I really appreciate the encouragement and the reminder that the EA community values a diversity of perspectives and experiences. It means a lot to know that even if my path doesn’t perfectly align with the main cause areas, there is still space to contribute meaningfully.

Your words have given me a fresh sense of reassurance and motivation to keep exploring and engaging. I know there’s still so much for me to learn, and I look forward to growing through these conversations and from the experiences of others in the community.

Thanks for this thoughtful response.

Your framing of the “pitch” really resonates with me. I’ve also come to see that EA funders are usually looking for two things: either a very clear expected-value calculation (large-scale upside even if low probability), or a hits-based angle that justifies the risk. In my own applications, I have tried to emphasize both the problem framing (AMR, vaccine access, neglected pathogens) and the counterfactuals (what happens if no one funds work like this in West Africa).

Where I sometimes struggle is that the models of impact that are easiest to pitch are not always the ones that are easiest to pursue from here. For example, data generation without lab infrastructure is a huge bottleneck, and “outsourcing” samples to labs abroad doesn’t build the kind of capacity that would make Africa a real hub for cost-effective interventions in the future. So my pitch often ends up highlighting not just the potential impact of the science, but also the long-term community and capacity-building effects.

I agree with you that EA orgs may undervalue this community dimension. A grant that enables African researchers to stay in Africa and work on global health challenges doesn’t just have immediate outputs—it creates future multipliers by training students, sustaining institutions, and making EA more global in practice rather than just in aspiration.

And your point about cost-effectiveness is key. The “multiplier effect” of lower cost of living and local economic benefit is rarely factored into evaluations, yet it can make projects here 2–3x more efficient than equivalents in high-income countries.

I’d be curious—when you’ve pitched community-building or capacity-building angles, have you found particular ways of framing them that land better with funders?

Thank you for this kind and encouraging message. You’re right—it’s not always easy to share openly. To be honest, I don’t know how a lot of people will perceive me after now. But I felt it was important to speak from where I stand. Sometimes it seems that EA defines “doing good” in a particular way, and that can make it hard to see where other forms of impact fit in.

I’ve participated in some EA mentoring programs, and I found them valuable. At the same time, they often feel like they are preparing people for a job. But what happens in the event that you already have a form of impactful job, yet your impact is limited due to some structural or resource constraints? I wonder what mentorship would look like if it focused more on helping people overcome those constraints that limit their impact, especially in contexts like mine.

On the funding side, I agree with you—smaller funders are very difficult to find. That said, the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics was able to get started with initial support from Emergent Ventures and ACX grants, and that gave us some momentum. Still, building biomedical research capacity here is extremely difficult—both in terms of infrastructure and sustainable funding. Sometimes the issue isn’t the strength of the idea, but rather finding people who really understand the Nigerian and West African context and are willing to invest in it.

Even with the hurdles, I remain committed to pushing forward, and conversations like this give me hope that there’s value in sharing the journey openly.