Reflecting On My Career Journey

By Kevin Xia 🔸 @ 2025-07-21T15:51 (+64)

I learned about EA in mid-2022, finished my degree and got “properly” involved in my local community in 2023, got my first paid role in the movement in 2024 and got promoted to Managing Director at Hive at the beginning of 2025.

In career-related conversations, I often get asked about how I got into my role. I used to be hesitant to share my career journey, since it seemed riddled with luck and privilege. In many instances, I felt like I was just in the right place at the right time, and many of my actions were only possible because I could dedicate significant time (~10h per week) for the largest part of a year to pursuing what I found to be impactful. However, every time I do tell the story, people seem to find it useful for various reasons. Over time, I identified a few takeaways that seem more broadly applicable. More recently, I read this great post approaching advice from a “tacit knowledge” perspective. And now, the EA Forum is running a Career Conversations Week? It seems about time to write this one up.

This post reads very much like a personal reflection, it’s very story-tell-y with details that may not be helpful for everyone. I decided to add my “key takeaways” for both “chapters” to highlight what I find most important. I recommend skimming through everything else, depending on how relevant it seems to you and focusing on the takeaways.

0. Deciding to pivot my career

[Little to no career advice, but perhaps valuable background to understand where I am coming from]

In mid-2022, I was involved in your classical vegan activism circles. I studied Psychology in addition to my (almost finished) Philosophy degree, as I thought it would be a useful safety net, in case my plans to become a professor wouldn’t play out because a philosophy degree didn't seem to mean much in the normal world.^[1] At that point, several inputs quickly followed one another:

• I learned that evidence exists: As part of my psychology degree, I read up on Social Psychology and found myself baffled by the amount of research into human behavior and, importantly, how human behavior is drastically different from how we intuitively assume it to be. This was especially mind-blowing, because of how much of my activism at the time was rooted in my vague assumptions about how to change someone's mind and behavior, coupled with some anecdotal evidence.
• I learned that I might be wrong: After my partner gifted it to me a few months earlier, I read Tobias Leenaert’s How to Create A Vegan World. The book doesn’t only wonderfully outline several ways our advocacy could be more effective, it proactively and straightforwardly addresses all of the initial counterpoints that I had in reading the book, showcasing how I don’t just happen to have the silver bullet argument on advocacy strategy and how, in fact, many people know everything I know (and more) and went on to pursue strategies different from mine.

• I learned that I could aim higher: After talking a lot about all the things I learned in my Social Psychology research and Tobias’ book, a friend of mine suggested that I attend an introductory event by the local Effective Altruism community.^[2] One event led to another, and I received several inputs from people that becoming a philosophy professor might perhaps not be the most impactful way to affect change.

I noticed the way I am going about changing the world was rooted in bad evidence, and was first met with the idea of critically examining my activism and my plans. I learned that in affecting the world, my career is probably a key lever in my impact and rather than aiming for a career that “does good” (broadly), I should try to find out how I can have the biggest impact possible. So there I was, full of excitement, energy and ambition - but without a career plan, knowledge of the opportunities or experience/background that seemed relevant at all.

1. Creating my own opportunities

Now, while I had no plan, knowledge or background relevant to my renewed career goals, my default career path seemed.. robust? I wanted to pursue a Master’s in Practical Ethics at Oxford University, which seemed like an all-around reasonable next step; except now more for network effects rather than academic credentials. As such, my near-term plan was pretty much set in stone. My academic performance was quite solid, so I knew I needed to up my game in any sorts of projects outside of my grades, including self-started projects, external volunteering and work experience. Unfortunately, job opportunities were rare, and the platforms I checked didn’t post many volunteering opportunities, so I focused on creating my own opportunities. As there was not much to be done in philosophy^[3] itself, I pursued what I thought was important and what I thought I could do:

• I was excited by everything I had learned in social psychology, but disappointed that no one in my advocacy circles was talking about any research whatsoever -> I pitched (and gave) a talk about what I had learned in my social psychology research (and slightly beyond) to our local animal rights congress. I got two of my friends involved because I was too nervous to do it on my own. I wasn’t sure if I had anything to say that hasn’t been said by anyone ever, but an organizer friend strongly encouraged us to give the talk anyway.
• I wanted to help bridge the gap between EA thinking and research and the action-focused, ambitious animal advocates in my social circle -> I started participating more in our local EA events, and pitched to our board president to start an Effective Animal Advocacy Austria group.
• I wanted to somehow get formally involved with EA Austria and when I pitched the EAA group, they were just recruiting board member applications -> Our board president asked me to apply, and I had just committed to applying to more positions that I thought were beyond my capabilities, so I nervously did. I ended up receiving the most votes (I believe, this was largely due to my higher time commitment and the concrete goals I wanted to achieve) - and through an internal vote, became board president for EA Austria in 2023.
• I wanted to make sure that my efforts to bridge the gap between EA thinking and ideas, and animal advocates were based on some form of evidence -> I started a survey project with a friend of mine to investigate attitudes towards effective animal advocacy among animal advocates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
• I thought that virtual actions were probably underrated, but rarely did them myself for lack-of-accountability reasons -> I helped start and co-hosted regular virtual action sessions with our local animal welfare organization.
• During my time as board president at EA Austria, I had a lot of flexibility to do what I think mattered to help EA Austria grow -> I co-organized the EA Vienna group, scaled up our Instagram presence, and started the effective animal advocacy group I previously mentioned.
• I wanted to help other people onboard into the EA community in a smoother and more structured way than I had -> I started facilitating introductory and career fellowships, first with EA Austria, then with EA Virtual Programs. I would go on to design my own effective animal advocacy syllabus - more on that later.

Throughout all of this, I continuously build out my knowledge base by binging the 80,000 Hours podcast, running through the Animal Advocacy Careers intro course (and the further resources within it) and staying more intentionally up to date on movement news through Hive Highlights and Slack. I believe that this education part of the equation proved crucial as well, but don't have much more to say about this yet - perhaps a post for another day.

My key takeaways

• There are many ways to create your own opportunities, if you can’t find a job or even a (posted) volunteering opportunity.
• The concrete opportunities I found very valuable for numerous reasons are:
  • Speak at a (local) conference
  • Get involved in local community-building efforts
  • Start (small-scale) research projects
  • Host or help start events
• I believe there are many reasons why one might be hesitant to start their own things. For example, I thought for many of the things I wanted to do that I might have to register an entity (I didn’t) or have a website or landing page (absolutely not), or do something completely original that has literally never been done before (is there even anything left?), because that’s what I thought “good projects” are. In my experience, none of these constraints usually apply.
• Creating your own opportunities is much easier if you have the privilege of, in my case, ~10h/week, to explore and do what you like. I don’t think it is exactly fair that I had this privilege in the first place, but I do think that if you do have this privilege, you should use it for good.
• Having good people around you matters. Doing things alone is extremely scary. I wouldn’t have done anything of the above without friends and community members encouraging me and joining me in my attempts.

2. Getting noticed for my work

[Side Note: You can find my hirer's - Sofia’s - POV of all of this here! :)]

I believe some of the work I did mattered for its own right, and many efforts helped me build my confidence and learn the ropes around getting things done (broadly). But I think most importantly, they gave me space for visibility. Throughout all of my efforts, I shared learnings, asked for support and feedback and connected with tremendously helpful people, mostly on the Hive Slack. Everyone on the platform and in the movement was super responsive and happy to chat through my ideas, which I think, to this date, is often underappreciated/underutilized.

At the CARE Conference 2023, Sofia reached out to have a chat with me - my only 1-1 at the conference (I didn’t know that you do 1-1s at conferences). I later learned that Cameron had previously told her about me (I connected with Cameron to talk about our survey project) and that I was one of the more active members in the community, sharing what I knew and asking for support where I needed it. After making initial contact, I regularly kept Sofia up to date on my projects, asking for input where useful, and was encouraged to start a regional channel for Germany, Austria and Switzerland on the Slack space.

At EAGxVirtual 2023, I connected with more people from the Hive team. I had properly kick-started our effective animal advocacy group in Austria, so I had a lot to brainstorm about. After a few conversations, I was asked to volunteer to build out the community building resource page on Hive, which was perfect, since I wanted to proactively learn, take notes, and share my learnings about community building anyway.

As I was building Effective Animal Advocacy Austria, I started having many community member 1-1s to learn more about how to support them. I have found that many were wishing for a more structured, streamlined introduction to the whole effective animal advocacy thing. As part of my community-building deep dive, I went through several resource lists and found that there isn’t really an up-to-date syllabus/reading list to run EAA courses. I loved facilitating syllabus-based fellowships, so I decided to write my own.

As it shall turn out, this appeared to have been a key piece of the puzzle. I shared the draft with the Hive Slack, got feedback from brilliant people, and Sofia asked and encouraged me to turn it into a proper online course, rather than just a Google Doc for my local group. I thought surely this wasn’t my role to play - but having her encouragement made it difficult for me to say no. So I hustled it up, explored online course platforms, drafted some of the chapters on Thinkific - and then Sofia asked me to officially volunteer with Hive. Being honored, once again, I happily accepted and took it upon myself to finish the course and help with the resource pages. I shared my progress, gave feedback on documents, provided verbal input here and there and a month in, Sofia asked me on a call to discuss how volunteering was going for me. In preparation for this call, she mentioned a couple of things she thought I might be able to help with and casually dropped a comment that we would be discussing paid work at this point. I kind of glanced over it - call it selective reading based on disbelief - so when she suddenly talked about a full-time role in our chat, I was taken by quite some surprise. I happily accepted, did part-time for a month and switched to full-time basically immediately, since I noticed how much more I could contribute to my work and how unlikely my part-time university studies would matter in the long term.

My key takeaways

• Getting involved with a promising organization while it’s small and early stage increases your chances of being turned to when they scale up and look to hire.
• Knowing what you can offer and just doing it with minimal oversight, increases your chances of getting involved.
• Being responsive, reliable and proactive increases your chances of being trusted with ever increasingly complex work where you can prove yourself and your strengths further.
• Being broad but intentional in your connections and involvement increases your chances in high-stakes situations. E.g., I later learned that Sofia’s decision to hire me was strongly influenced by Cameron’s and Constance’s endorsement of me.

Whereas in part one of my journey, I felt highly agentic and like I strongly leveraged the time I had, this part felt like I was just at the right place at the right time. I was noticed by the person hiring me, because I shared my work on the platform she was monitoring (well, in this case, running). She hired me, because they had just received funding and, as a new scrappy charity, probably wouldn’t necessarily want to run a full-on hiring round. None of the key takeaways were intentional parts of my secret “getting-hired” plan; all of my insights are in retrospect.

In fact, nothing I did was for the explicit purpose of getting a job. And I think that is very important to help you stay sane. I pursued and shared my work because I thought it mattered, and I could grow from it. Perhaps, if I had seen each of my actions as a step to find a job, and if I hadn’t been quite this lucky, I would have felt a deep sense of frustration sooner or later, because I wouldn’t have found myself getting “closer” to my goals. Creating your own opportunities and increasing your surface area for serendipity is not a sure-fire, step-by-step, short-feedback loop journey to get a job — things are up to chance, and results may come suddenly and unexpectedly. Of course, you are more likely to be at the right place at the right time, if you try to be at loads of places all the time. But doing so sustainably is difficult, if it is for no other purpose than your job hunt.

1. ^{^}

   I later learned that a philosophy degree is quite common in the EA movement! Let the record show, I always knew there was value in it!

2. ^{^}

   I had known about Effective Altruism through my philosophy degree, but I was only aware of it in the context of the Peter Singer’s Drowning Child thought experiment. I heard the thought experiment, thought Singer was probably right, and didn’t really pursue things further.

3. ^{^}

   I did try to get my bachelors thesis published and gave a talk about deductive/non-intuitive ethical methodology at a philosophy workshop; both were great for my confidence but didn’t do much in terms of direct career capital building. Stories for another day!