15 Unconventional Ways I Used My Generalist Background to Transition into a High-Impact Career: My journey from School Principal to AI Safety Advisor

By Moneer @ 2025-08-19T10:34 (+33)

Introduction

We read countless times that AI Safety needs people from all backgrounds, but if you're not coming from a technical background, the path forward is not so clear.

Over the past year, I successfully transitioned into a full-time role in AI Safety, but if you looked at my career history, you'd struggle to know how I got here.

My Career History

1. Research Intern - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Beirut (2010)
2. School Principal - Ittihad National Private School, Abu Dhabi (2012-2022)
3. Learning & Evaluation Associate - Renaisi, London (2023-2024)
4. Impact Consultant - Freelance (2022-2025)
5. Advisor, AI Law & Policy - Successif (2025-Present)

The Key Learning

Career transitions aren't linear journeys. Some of our most valuable milestones emerge from the unique connections and unexpected intersections our background enables us to make.

What this List is Not

This list is not a comprehensive roadmap. In reality, I took more than 170 actions (I kept a log) following a four-pronged approach: 

• job applications/work tests
• upskilling
• deep networking
• small projects/pro bono consulting

The 15 Ways

Note: Phrases sandwiched between asterisks (*like this*) represent hyperlinks to real artefacts (e.g. LinkedIn posts, blog posts, resources), demonstrating how I documented my journey and rebuilt my public persona in a new field.

1. Lightning talk

April 2024  - Used my personal passion for NonViolent Communication (NVC) to give a lightning talk at a Consultants for Impact (CFI) retreat. This was one of my first cheap tests for gauging how the community responds to ideas I'm passionate about and what meaningful connections might emerge. Edmo Gamelin, retreat organizer and Director of Research and Operations at CFI, would later become my career coach. Fellow attendee Hunter Muir and I connected over my NVC talk, and she also gave a lightning talk about her role as Programme Lead at Visual Meaning. Months later, we would collaborate on a project as part of an AI Governance course capstone (#12 below) - work that directly built on the software tool I learned about from her lightning talk.

2. Neurodiversity advocacy

August 2024 - Applied my dual perspective as someone who is neurodiverse and has school leadership experience creating inclusive educational environments to *request accommodations*  from high-impact employers during my application process. While I'm unsure if accommodations such as work test time extensions actually improved my success rate, they improved psychological comfort, helped me experiment with if/how I share my neurodiversity with potential employers (yikes!), and served as an immediate litmus test of organizational culture based on how orgs responded. While most orgs have inclusion statements at the end of their job descriptions designed to signal that all potential candidates are welcome, I learned that how this manifests differs across orgs - at least at the level of hiring practices. As someone for whom ‘organizational culture’ weighed heavily in my weighted factor decision model, this information was useful to tease out (and otherwise difficult to access.)

3. Meet-up host

September 2024 - Again used my passion for NVC to *co-host a meetup* at EAGxBerlin titled "Practical Strategies for Navigating Conflict and Difficult Conversations” with coaches in the high-impact space (Adam Tury, Simon Haberfellner, and Tee Barnett). Simon would later become my career advisor at Successif and refer me to my current job. Adam would later become a colleague at the same org.

4. Faith intersection

September 2024 - Used my Islamic faith to *host a meetup at EAGxBerlin* titled "Exploring the Intersection Between EA and Islam" - Another cheap test of community interest in an under-explored intersection. The positive reception and subsequent conversations over several months led to Ambitious Impact contacting me about co-founding an Islamic Effective Giving charity, which I ended up not pursuing due to startup uncertainty and my shorter timeline to secure stable employment.

5. Pro bono consulting & Advisory Board membership

October 2024 - Drew on my measurement and evaluation skills to review Theory of Change for two orgs (High Impact Medicine and Effective Altruism Germany) - A way to put my consulting skills both to the test and to good use, while building visibility and credibility about my commitment to the high-impact space. The High Impact Medicine opportunity started with a 1:1 request at EAGxBerlin, followed by a post-conference meeting, and eventually an invitation to *join their advisory board*. Despite having no background in or networks within medicine, I would later carry this validation into AI safety, where I similarly lacked a technical background. The EA Germany opportunity emerged serendipitously during a scheduling mix-up - while waiting for a third person to join a call, I asked the EAG Director how I could be of  value, mentioned my Theory of Change expertise, and discovered they were actually in the middle of reviewing theirs, so we immediately pivoted to spend the meeting time on that.

6. Training delivery

October 2024 - Applied what I learned as a board member at my daughter's forest school to *train* High Impact Med's core team on effective meetings using Roundspeak - Reinforced that seemingly unrelated experiences could bring valuable tools to high-impact orgs and that skills transfer isn't limited to obvious professional parallels, but can come from personal roles and unconventional contexts (e.g. alternative education).

7. Alumni networking

November 2024 - Used my alumni status to create a volunteering opportunity with Ambitious Impact, building a talent pipeline between my university and the organization - Leveraged existing networks and institutional relationships to create pathways for bringing new talent into the high-impact space. This reinforced that career capital isn't just about skills, but also about the networks you've built throughout your life - even from contexts that seem entirely unrelated to your target field.

8. Executive coaching

November 2024 - Drew on my experience as a school principal providing 1:1 coaching to staff and students to offer *weekly executive mentorship* sessions to the Director of an AI Safety organisation - Discovered that my coaching skills were both valuable in this space and something I genuinely loved doing (confidence I could draw on in my final job interview). This reinforced that soft skills from education - coaching, leadership development, and project management - are highly transferable and desperately needed in technical fields where such capabilities are often underdeveloped. The work led to me joining their advisory board.

9. Journey documentation

November 2024 - Used my career transition journey to - you guessed it - write about *my career transition journey* - Allowed me to take stock of and evaluate my progress, share - even test - my reasoning and learnings with people in similar situations, and - again - demonstrate my commitment to the space.

10. Course quality support

December 2024 - Combined my background in educational leadership and project management to evaluate and propose improvements for how BlueDot Impact, a flagship AI educator, monitored course facilitation quality - Applied educational quality assurance frameworks by interviewing course participants and facilitators, and meeting with program manager Adam Jones twice throughout the process.

11. User testing

January 2025 - Used my ignorance as a non-technical person to review my course facilitator’s side project introducing machine learning to non-technical people - Turned my knowledge gap into an asset by providing authentic user testing and accessibility feedback for technical communication.

12. Framework development

February 2025, ongoing - Used my background in sociology to design a *framework* for AI safety field-building - Applied social theory and systems thinking to address coordination challenges in the AI safety field. This evolved into a *prototype* project with Hunter Muir, who I met at a retreat months earlier (#1). Working on a live project contributing to the field allowed me to mention the work in conversations throughout the space, meet with and seek feedback from experts, and explore potential use-cases with organizations - ultimately: acquiring context, context, context.

13. Program facilitation

February 2025 - Combined my experiences in teacher training and youth group facilitation to *facilitate* a 6-week structured program helping experienced professionals transition into high-impact careers - Volunteering for the Impact Accelerator Program confirmed my ability to guide professionals who were - if not in, likely on their way to - the high-impact space. It also reinforced my passion for supporting others' professional development and provided evidence of my facilitation capabilities - learning that helped me identify a new category of potential roles around talent development and community building, which I could reference confidently in applications and interviews.

14. Cross-domain research

April 2025 - Used my experience doing peace work in Israel/Palestine to produce *research* on win-win outcomes in AI governance - As my BlueDot AI Governance course capstone project, I demonstrated how conflict transformation tools could offer fresh approaches to AI governance challenges, while contributing original research that bridges two seemingly unrelated fields.

15. Resource development 

July 2025 - Used a framework I learned 15 years ago in my bachelor's study in anthropology to write a *resource* on navigating cultural diversity in high-impact career transitions - Integrated Hofstede's cultural dimensions framework to understand how cultural background creates unique challenges and opportunities for AI safety career transitions. This demonstrated my ability to apply academic frameworks to practical challenges while addressing an underexplored area. While too recent to assess long-term impact, this resource may help expand talent pipelines by making transitions more accessible to diverse backgrounds, while positioning me as someone who thinks systematically about inclusion and talent development in the field..

Career Outcome

• In June 2025, I received my first offer: a Research Manager position at a prestigious AI Governance think-tank, though we determined together that work-life balance considerations made it not the right match.
• In July 2025, I accepted my current role as Advisor at Successif. 

What unexpected connections will you make on your journey?

Recommended Readings

• Challenges from Career Transitions and What To Expect From Advising (Successif)
• From rave websites to AI risk: 30 years of career lessons (Patrick Gruban)
• Why experienced professionals fail to land high-impact roles (Gergő Gáspár)

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my AI alignment course facilitator, Lovkush Agarwal, who emphatically encouraged me to write this piece many moons ago, and Al-Hussein Saqr and Patrick Gruban  who’ve coloured it with generous feedback.