Jeffray_Behr
Bio
My approach to improving the world is to:
- live sparingly so I can maximize my donations to highly effective charities (based on EA-related organizations' recommendations such as GiveWell, Founders Pledge, and Animal Charity Evaluators)
- pursue an as impactful as possible career based on my personal skills and experiences (I am currently working for New School Foods, a startup which is developing whole muscle plant-based fish at price parity)
- live a vegan and environmentally-conscious lifestyle (to reduce animal suffering and mitigate climate change)
- promote the EA philosophy (I co-led the Effective Altruism Waterloo group in university and have since facilitated 5 cohorts of the EA Virtual program, plus initiated a podcast episode on the topic of effective altruism run by the University of Waterloo Engineers Without Borders chapter)
- learn more about about effective altruism sub-areas through reading EA-related books and articles as well as listening to EA-related podcasts
- write about EA (I have made 2 posts on the EA forum)
- volunteer at EA-related organizations (I am currently a volunteer for ALLFED)
- use my spare time to help others pursue a career in alternative proteins (I created a career guide and podcast series for this)
Posts 3
Comments6
Excellent perspective.
The most convincing argument I've come across against cultivated meat is from Joe Fassler's 2021 article in The Counter where he notes: "If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow.
All of those facilities would also come with a heart-stopping price tag: a minimum of $1.8 trillion, according to Food Navigator. That’s where things get complicated. It’s where critics say—and even GFI’s own numbers suggest—that cell-cultured meat may never be economically viable, even if it’s technically feasible."
As someone who discovered EA while studying mechanical engineering, I have thought about this a lot. My initial plan was to work in renewable energy technologies, but I shifted towards working on plant-based meat technologies and developing more efficient processing equipment. Also, I have been able to use my background in mechanical engineering to help ALLFED as a volunteer by researching how various resilient food technologies could scale up in the event of a global catastrophe. I also recommend anyone interested in learning about the intersection of EA and engineering to check out High Impact Engineer's resources page: https://www.highimpactengineers.org/resources
I joined the SHIPs (https://www.notion.so/SHIPs-Student-led-High-Impact-Projects-035514f7b8594205b16e3e3a9cf6e736) program and came up with a few project ideas that I think are worth pursuing, but I don't have the background to do them effectively. The following are some of my ideas that I encourage others to consider working on:
Default Advocacy: Advocating (via sending emails and/or calling) to people of influence to set the altruistic option as the default (to take advantage of the default effect since people are less likely to opt in/out of something if it requires effort). Examples of this could include have all citizens be organ donors by default, have vegetarian/vegan meals the default option provided, installing energy efficient equipment as the default in buildings, etc.
Influence Celebrities to Donate Effectively: The goal of this project is to convince celebrities and other wealthy and/or highly influential people to donate to effective charities. Since they have a vast amount of wealth, the scale of possible donations is quite large. In addition, their influence my inspire their followers to also give more effectively, thereby magnifying the impact of this project. There currently exists High Impact Athletes (https://highimpactathletes.org/athletes), but there is definitely more room to grow this concept to other celebrities such as movie/TV stars, musical artists, business moguls, politicians, etc.
Impact of Switching Protein Subsidies: Research the pros and cons of the US government switching its subsidies from conventional meat agriculture to alternative protein agriculture. Create a detailed report highlighting these benefits (and drawbacks). Ideally, this report could be given to a politician as the basis for a policy/bill to switch subsidies from conventional meat agriculture to alternative protein agriculture.
Other projects ideas from the SHIPs program can be found below: https://airtable.com/shrEGsUnvXNnL8k8V/tblTdppN872IArKIR https://airtable.com/shrCXtRpCW1HxxafC/tblugqOktQp7zzxrm
Hello Elif,
Here are my thoughts on your questions.
1. How Should I Prioritize My Time and Energy as an Undergrad?
Focus on learning, building your professional social skills, and developing your network in the alternative protein space.
2. Which Skills Should I Focus on Developing First?
What skill to focus on first depends on your long term career goal so I’d suggest thinking about that first. If you are unsure though, I’d suggest focusing on general skills (i.e. strategic and applied skills).
3. What Kinds of Internship or Project Opportunities Are Available in the Alternative Protein Space at the Undergraduate Level?
There are many internship opportunities. Talist’s job board (https://altprotein.jobs/?s=vV4CAzhDojAgzfv1IuZN&utm_campaign=job-board&utm_medium=forward&utm_source=talist) has a filter for internships. It doesn’t hurt to reach out to companies to see if they are willing to hire an intern (you’d be surprised how many companies would find an intern very beneficial to them and are willing to hire one). In terms of projects, I would suggest either working on one of GFI’s solutions (https://gfi.org/solutions/) and/or find a researcher working on alt proteins (https://gfi.org/resource/alternative-protein-researcher-directory/) and offer to help them.
4. How Can I Help Make Our Alt Protein Project Chapter as Impactful as Possible?
Many high impact actions are doing something that’s never been done before. They are usually high risk, high reward (assuming you have some reasoning to justify so) which may be worth pursuing. Such ideas include starting an alt protein hackathon on campus, organizing an alt protein career fair, etc. That said, if you don’t want high risk, some more tried and true ideas for impact are creating a course on alt proteins, convincing professors to do research in alt proteins, and advocating to campus food services to have more plant-based options (or a meatless Monday).
5. Is It Too Early to Be Thinking About My Long-Term Career Direction?
It’s never too early to start thinking long term but just be aware that your interests change over time as well as the world job market changes over time. That said, I think creating a plan with specific goals for the next 1, 5, 10, and 30 years would be a useful exercise (80,000 Hours has templates/exercises to help with this, https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-plan-template/).
6. How Should I Balance Multiple Interests Without Losing Focus?
There are pros and cons to being a specialist as well as being a generalist. I’d say which to pursue depends on your career goal. For example, if you want to go into academia, then being a specialist is probably the best bet. However, if you have a lot of uncertainty about your career, then it might make sense to still be a generalist for now.
7. Who Should I Reach Out To and How?
Cold-email companies/organizations you're interested in to learn more about them. Reach out to people whose role you’d like to have one day and request a meeting to learn about their journey.
Additional resources are my career guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHUQgAfMyQTMMcpLZ5LPNcQa7GJ6-JcqXYQ3KOGfuzE/edit?tab=t.0) and podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1884302). Also, feel free to reach out to me for a call if you want someone to bounce ideas off of.