EAG Talks Potential pitfalls in university EA community building | Jessica McCurdy | EAG Bay Area 23
In this talk, Jessica is dicussing some of the pitfalls and risks associated with community building at universities. She is discussing how some community building might be net negative and why she doesn't think community building should be the default option for university students interested in EA. While she claims that university groups can be highly impactful, she also claims that it should be done carefully. This talk is focusing on universities but contains some points that may generalize to other types of community building. Jessica graduated from Yale in 2021 with a BS in Cognitive Science. There, she helped organize Yale EA for over four years including a gap semester where she worked on it full-time. She had been volunteering with CEA since 2018 and started working full time in December 2021 on increasing broad support for uni groups. She created and scaled the university group accelerator program which has helped around 75 groups. She is now leading the uni groups team at CEA and is setting the strategy and plans for the coming year.