Weronika Żurek 🔸

Fieldbuilding Fellow @ Astra Fellowship
447 karmaJoined Working (0-5 years)

Bio

Participation
3

I am currently a Fieldbuilding Fellow at the Astra Fellowship, and I focus my work on hiring needs and talent pipelines in the AI safety community. 

Previously I was a volunteer at Anima International (2017-2023), where I ran a local volunteer group and a campaign team. In 2024, I set up the EA group at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland (currently a city-wide EA group for students). 

I hold a Master's degree in applied psychology. I usually spend my free time doing arts (painting, drawing, crocheting, sewing, and others) or engaging in physical activities (dancing, bouldering, cycling, climbing trees). 

Please have a very low bar for reaching out. I am happy to talk to every person in the EA or AI safety community.

How others can help me

I am looking for a job in AI safety fieldbuilding starting from autumn 2026. Let me know if you're aware of an interesting opening!

How I can help others

I have some takes on EA community building and AI safety fieldbuilding, which I am happy to share. I also have a lot of fun facts about bumblebees, which I am just as happy to share.

Comments
10

In the current cycle (January-June 2026), there are only two fellows in the fieldbuilding track. For the next cycle (September 2026 - February 2027), there will  be no fieldbuilding track at all. Instead, there will be a separate program called Generator Residency, which is organised by Constellation and Kairos. You can find the details here: https://generatorresidency.org/?utm_source=ais-groups&utm_medium=slack&utm_campaign=summer-26 

I am so happy to see this career profile. If we want to scale the field, we really need more great fieldbuilders, and this type of work has not been getting enough attention from career advisory organisations. Thank you,  80 k!

I am happy to hear that it was helpful for you, Mia!

Thank you so much for speaking up, Frances. What you wrote is heartbreaking and should have never taken place. I am deeply disappointed both about how CEA failed to react to the harm, and how they responded to your post. This is a significant negative update on an organisation that I truly trusted before.

I expect that factory farming will become even more harmful as a result of AGI

Thank you so much for sharing that, Guney. I will definitely use some of your ideas

I believe an important piece of information here is that Open Phil did not provide funding for organizers spending less than 10 h/week organizing their groups (or at least that was the case when I was applying for funding), so I suppose most of the funded students were probably working on the topic a bit more than that (this is a guess, though)

Hi Joris and Lin, thank you for your responses. Just as mentioned, it is quite interesting, for how many student receiving funding is the factor that decides about them setting up / taking over leading a group or not doing so.

Joris, I will be more than happy to share my thoughts with you in the future. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me at weronikamzurek@gmail.com or via slack anytime :) thank you for your work on that and I wish you all best in the process!

Thank you for the post and for clarifying the current situation. 

I have mixed feelings about the results of the upcoming changes, particularly about stopping funding for part-time group organizers, as I feel this may lead to excluding many students from engaging in organizing groups. This particularly applies to:

  • students with a difficult financial situation
  • students who must cover high costs of living (e.g. due to living in an expensive city or region)
  • students who must pay their university fees or pay back their student loan

I myself am a group organizer to whom none of the above applies, and still one of my main worries about setting up a university EA group was that I would have to start working at some point to cover my costs of living (combining studies, work and organizing a group does not seem possible). In fact, this scenario seemed more likely to happen than not. Thankfully, I received a grant from Open Philantropy to work on the group part-time and this was a game changer. This was the single most important thing that allowed me to set up the group and focus on it fully, which is critical, as I am the only organizer. 

I am afraid that not providing funding may stop many students from setting up new groups, lower the capacity of current group organizers and even lead to some groups ceasing to exist. Furthermore, leading a group may essencially become an exclusive activity, available only to financially privileged students. 

Having said that, I appreciate the transparency of both your, and Open Phil's post about the changes. Thank you for sharing that!

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