Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸
Bio
I care about making funding for high impact causes more robust & diversified. I'm based in the Bay Area, advise Asia-based community builders and run Pineapple Ops. I previously worked in consulting, recruiting and marketing, with a BA in Sociology and focused on social movements. (A little on my journey to EA)
Unless otherwise stated, I always write in a personal capacity.
/'vɛðehi/ or VEH-the-hee
Some posts I've written and particularly like:Â
- The flow of funding in EA movement building
- Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers
- Ideas from network science about EA community building
- The funnel or the individual: Two approaches to understanding EA engagement
- The availability bias in job hunting
- What comes after the intro fellowship?
Advice I frequently give:
- When in doubt, apply*
- What Ops in EA is like
- If you're running a retreat, nail the vibes and venue
- Add randomness to your conferences
I'm always keen to hear feedback: admonymous.co/vaidehiagarwalla
How others can help me
If you feel I can do something (anything) better, please let me know. I want to be warm, welcoming & supportive - and I know I can fail to live up to those standards sometimes. Have a low bar for reaching out - (anonymous form here).Â
If you think you have different views to me (on anything!), reach out -I want to hear more from folks with different views to me. If you have deep domain expertise in a very specific area (especially non-EA) I'd love to learn about it!
Connect me to fundraisers, product designers, people with ops & recruiting backgrounds and potential PA/ops folks!Â
How I can help others
I can give specific feedback on movement building & meta EA project plans and career advising.Â
I can also give feedback on posts and grant applications.Â
Posts 65
Comments695
Topic contributions69
Have not thought about compounding returns to orgs! I can think of some concrete examples with AIM ecosystem charities (e.g one org helping bring another into creation or creating a need for others to exist). Food for thought.
Curious how you see the communitarianism playing out in practice?
There's definitely a cooperative side to things that makes it a lot easier to ask for help amongst EAs than the relevant professional groups someone might be a part of, but not sure I'm seeing obvious implications.
Very curious if you can describe the types of people you know, their profiles, what cause areas and roles they are have applied for, what constraints they have if any.Â
But typically (not MECE, written quickly, not in order of importance, some combination could work etc.):
- "Relentlessly resourceful" from Paul Graham covers a bunch of it better than I could
- Strong intuitions for people management and org building (likely from experience)
- Strong manager / leader
- Gets shit done - can move quickly, decisive, keeps the momentum going, strong prioritization skills
- Cares about structure and can implement systems, but only when they actually matter for helping the org achieve their goals
- Able to switch between object level, in the weeds work and strategic thinking, and willing to do in the weeds work if needed (for earlier stage orgs)
Recent example - an op ed piece on the AI safety pipeline having too many researchers is labelled community, a post advocating for more AI field building by an OP grant maker is not.Â