I want to begin by apologizing to Frances. I recognize that she experienced real harm from action and inaction taken by people at CEA, including me, and I wish we had gotten this right from the beginning without Frances needing to advocate for herself at such personal cost. Sexual harassment has no place at CEA or in EA more broadly, CEA made substantial mistakes, and it is important that we do better in the future.
I appreciate that Frances and other readers desire more transparency about what happened here. I want to share some additional context because I want to fully acknowledge the nature of how CEA made certain mistakes and how we need to act differently in the future. I also want to acknowledge there are frustrating legal limitations on what I can share, and by default I will be unable to engage with comments or questions that require further disclosure. To be clear, in no way is any of the information I am sharing intended to change the fact that I fully believe CEA made serious mistakes, for which I am very sorry.
In the fall of 2024, Riley went to HR with the document Frances references to share complaints about a colleague’s behavior. Those concerns were the focus of Riley’s writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didn’t share) it. We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
It is now clear the ways in which our approach was too limited, too focused on following a standard HR process, and insufficiently proactive in recognizing the harmful nature of the contents included with the complaints. The focus on evaluating Riley’s concerns meant multiple staff members made a significant error when they did not identify and investigate the inappropriate and excessive content included within his document. Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault. It was not until Frances first approached the Legal Team in August 2025 to express concerns about the contents of the document that we launched an investigation. CEA should have proactively initiated this investigation sooner, without requiring Frances to act first. Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate during what was an already difficult time. I also want to recognize the ways in which poor communication from CEA staff may have contributed to an experience of feeling like an individual needing to navigate a cold bureaucracy, which could have added to the emotional difficulty of this experience and left Frances feeling uncared for rather than supported. These are real failures for which I am deeply sorry, and I want to name them clearly.
While we cannot unwind the harm that has already occurred, it is important to me that CEA learns and makes improvements to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The forward-looking recommendation from the report was to implement training (which we have begun in multiple forms), but I think it is naive to believe traditional HR trainings would address every issue. In particular, we need to create a culture where there is more organizational ownership and proactivity to prevent and address sexual harassment. We’re laying the groundwork for some of those changes via new staffing (Riley no longer works at CEA, we have a new HR manager, and multiple additional hires are on the way). I also recognize laying groundwork means we are far from the desired end state, and that we will need to work hard to improve instead of offering quick fix solutions. The burden to act should never have been on Frances, and CEA needs to do a better job living up to its values.
Our strategy development thus far has been a team effort between me, @Emma Richter🔸, and a number of communications consultants and collaborators from other EA organizations.
I agree it would be great to have a leader with experience with turnaround brand efforts! Unfortunately, the pool of people who share and understand EA values while also having that experience is quite small (though again, I'd be very open to any referrals you or others have!). We're looking for a long-term leader for our Communications Team and are open to people with a variety of backgrounds, including a brand focus, but also other types of communications expertise, e.g. someone from a media background. Ultimately, I think "communications" is a wide enough skillset that we should be suspicious of the idea that any one person will solve our problems. I'm looking for a strong strategic leader, and then we'll build a team around them as needed.
I want the cause-neutral resources you mention to exist. I also worry that CEA isn't the right place to host them for now, both because we unfortunately have to make difficult tradeoffs on our focuses right now (we have some public comms related to our own strategic updates that we'll hopefully be sharing in the not too distant future), and because it would be a major lift for us to create some of these resources given we don't have significant staff or other infrastructure for career advisory articles and services.
This is something I'd ideally like to see other organizations in the ecosystem contribute to. I'm hoping we'll hear more from @Probably Good, who seems like a natural home for many of these activities (they did just announce they're restarting advising). It's possible that the EA Opportunity Board (which CEA recently started running) could also serve to capture more cause-neutral job opportunities.
Regardless of whether or not anyone agrees with 80Ks strategic pivot, one thing I'm grateful for is their transparency. It makes it easier for others in the community to know what balls people are and aren't holding and to coordinate around gaps.
There’s no explicit cause area focus for this upcoming EAG (or any planned EAG). We’d love to have people focused on global health and development and animal welfare!
Congratulations Sjir! I've been impressed by the energy Sjir has brought to GWWC, including during his periods as interim CEO. I'm excited to see the growth of GWWC, the pledge, and effective giving under his leadership!
I think it's possible our views are compatible here. I want expertise to be valued more on the margin because I found EV and many other EA orgs to tilt towards an extreme of prioritizing value alignment, but I certainly believe there are cases where value alignment and general intelligence matter most and also that there are cases where expertise matters more.
I think the key lies in trying to figure out which situations are which in advance.
I think the weighted views of the community should likely inform CEA's cause prioritization, though I think it should be one data point among many. I do continue to worry a bit about self-fulfilling prophecies. If EA organizations make it disproportionately easy for people prioritizing certain causes to engage (e.g. by providing events for those specific causes, or by heavily funding employment opportunities for those causes) then I think it becomes murkier how to account for weighted cause prioritization because cause prioritization is both an input and an output.
I want to begin by apologizing to Frances. I recognize that she experienced real harm from action and inaction taken by people at CEA, including me, and I wish we had gotten this right from the beginning without Frances needing to advocate for herself at such personal cost. Sexual harassment has no place at CEA or in EA more broadly, CEA made substantial mistakes, and it is important that we do better in the future.
I appreciate that Frances and other readers desire more transparency about what happened here. I want to share some additional context because I want to fully acknowledge the nature of how CEA made certain mistakes and how we need to act differently in the future. I also want to acknowledge there are frustrating legal limitations on what I can share, and by default I will be unable to engage with comments or questions that require further disclosure. To be clear, in no way is any of the information I am sharing intended to change the fact that I fully believe CEA made serious mistakes, for which I am very sorry.
In the fall of 2024, Riley went to HR with the document Frances references to share complaints about a colleague’s behavior. Those concerns were the focus of Riley’s writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didn’t share) it. We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
It is now clear the ways in which our approach was too limited, too focused on following a standard HR process, and insufficiently proactive in recognizing the harmful nature of the contents included with the complaints. The focus on evaluating Riley’s concerns meant multiple staff members made a significant error when they did not identify and investigate the inappropriate and excessive content included within his document. Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault. It was not until Frances first approached the Legal Team in August 2025 to express concerns about the contents of the document that we launched an investigation. CEA should have proactively initiated this investigation sooner, without requiring Frances to act first. Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate during what was an already difficult time. I also want to recognize the ways in which poor communication from CEA staff may have contributed to an experience of feeling like an individual needing to navigate a cold bureaucracy, which could have added to the emotional difficulty of this experience and left Frances feeling uncared for rather than supported. These are real failures for which I am deeply sorry, and I want to name them clearly.
While we cannot unwind the harm that has already occurred, it is important to me that CEA learns and makes improvements to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The forward-looking recommendation from the report was to implement training (which we have begun in multiple forms), but I think it is naive to believe traditional HR trainings would address every issue. In particular, we need to create a culture where there is more organizational ownership and proactivity to prevent and address sexual harassment. We’re laying the groundwork for some of those changes via new staffing (Riley no longer works at CEA, we have a new HR manager, and multiple additional hires are on the way). I also recognize laying groundwork means we are far from the desired end state, and that we will need to work hard to improve instead of offering quick fix solutions. The burden to act should never have been on Frances, and CEA needs to do a better job living up to its values.
Frances, I’m sorry. You deserved better from us.
Our strategy development thus far has been a team effort between me, @Emma Richter🔸, and a number of communications consultants and collaborators from other EA organizations.
I agree it would be great to have a leader with experience with turnaround brand efforts! Unfortunately, the pool of people who share and understand EA values while also having that experience is quite small (though again, I'd be very open to any referrals you or others have!). We're looking for a long-term leader for our Communications Team and are open to people with a variety of backgrounds, including a brand focus, but also other types of communications expertise, e.g. someone from a media background. Ultimately, I think "communications" is a wide enough skillset that we should be suspicious of the idea that any one person will solve our problems. I'm looking for a strong strategic leader, and then we'll build a team around them as needed.
Agreed that marketing is valuable! We're actually in the process of hiring for someone now (note that the job posting at that link is closed, though if you know other potentially interested marketing professionals you can feel free to send them to our expression of interest form).
I want the cause-neutral resources you mention to exist. I also worry that CEA isn't the right place to host them for now, both because we unfortunately have to make difficult tradeoffs on our focuses right now (we have some public comms related to our own strategic updates that we'll hopefully be sharing in the not too distant future), and because it would be a major lift for us to create some of these resources given we don't have significant staff or other infrastructure for career advisory articles and services.
This is something I'd ideally like to see other organizations in the ecosystem contribute to. I'm hoping we'll hear more from @Probably Good, who seems like a natural home for many of these activities (they did just announce they're restarting advising). It's possible that the EA Opportunity Board (which CEA recently started running) could also serve to capture more cause-neutral job opportunities.
Regardless of whether or not anyone agrees with 80Ks strategic pivot, one thing I'm grateful for is their transparency. It makes it easier for others in the community to know what balls people are and aren't holding and to coordinate around gaps.
There’s no explicit cause area focus for this upcoming EAG (or any planned EAG). We’d love to have people focused on global health and development and animal welfare!
Congratulations Sjir! I've been impressed by the energy Sjir has brought to GWWC, including during his periods as interim CEO. I'm excited to see the growth of GWWC, the pledge, and effective giving under his leadership!
EA Funds is still figuring out some of the details for their future setup. I imagine they'll say more once plans are closer to finalized.
This is false.
I think it's possible our views are compatible here. I want expertise to be valued more on the margin because I found EV and many other EA orgs to tilt towards an extreme of prioritizing value alignment, but I certainly believe there are cases where value alignment and general intelligence matter most and also that there are cases where expertise matters more.
I think the key lies in trying to figure out which situations are which in advance.
I think the weighted views of the community should likely inform CEA's cause prioritization, though I think it should be one data point among many. I do continue to worry a bit about self-fulfilling prophecies. If EA organizations make it disproportionately easy for people prioritizing certain causes to engage (e.g. by providing events for those specific causes, or by heavily funding employment opportunities for those causes) then I think it becomes murkier how to account for weighted cause prioritization because cause prioritization is both an input and an output.