
Ben is the founder of 80,000 Hours, a non-profit that has reached millions of people and helped 3000+ people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems. He’s the author of 80,000 Hours: How to Have a Fulfilling Career That Does Good (Penguin May 2026) and writes about how to prepare for advanced AI on Substack.
Dissatisfied with the career advice he received at university, Benjamin began researching the guidance he wished he’d had. Over the next ten years, he grew 80,000 Hours from a student society in Oxford into a non-profit that today reaches 4 million people annually, has over 50 staff, and has raised $30m of funding. It has been covered in the Financial Times, Guardian, TIME, Wall Street Journal and BBC, and was one of the first non-profits to go through Y Combinator, the world’s top startup accelerator. 80,000 Hours provides free online research, one-on-one advice, a job board and podcast to help people find more fulfilling and impactful careers.
Over 10 million people have read their advice online and over 3,000 have switched to more impactful careers. This includes people who helped to pioneer research into AI safety at organisations like Anthropic, DeepMind, RAND and METR, have taken key roles aiming to prevent a catastrophic pandemic, and have pledged billions of dollars to high-impact charities.
As CEO for the organisation’s first ten years, Ben led strategy, fundraising, and senior management, building an organisation with average annual staff retention of 95%, while also writing the Career Guide, Key Ideas series and over 100 articles. His TEDx talk has been viewed over 6 million times.
Today, as President of 80,000 Hours, he writes about what’s happening with AI and what to do about it on Substack, and provides strategy consulting to projects aiming to tackle AI risks, including Epoch AI and an AI-focused hedge fund.
Before 80,000 Hours, he was the first undergraduate to intern as an analyst at Orbis Investment Advisory, a $20bn fund. He was the first non-founding member of Giving What We Can, pledging to give 10% of his income to effective charities for life. He has a 1st from Oxford in a Masters of Physics and Philosophy, has published in climate physics, and speaks Chinese, badly.
See my CV on LinkedIn.