Courses
Make your high-impact career pivot
Make your high-impact career pivot
Have you built systems, scaled teams, or made organisations run better? Join a free 4-day online bootcamp to identify high-impact career paths that match your skills, apply to opportunities, and build a network to accelerate your career pivot.
15 min application | Runs 15th-18th December or 7th Feb-7th March
No fees
Online
4-day or 4-week options
20-30 hours total
For operations professionals
Who this course is for
You have a proven ops track record
Have developed skills and achieved strong results in operations or organizational leadership.
You're impact-driven
You want to apply your abilities to solving pressing problems and are open-minded about the best ways to help others.
You're action-oriented
You're ready to commit time and energy to taking meaningful steps, not just thinking about them.
This program is focused on operations professionals & organizational leaders. We expect strong applicants to come from backgrounds like:
- Chiefs of staff, COOs, and project managers.
- Product managers and entrepreneurs.
- Recruitment, finance, and business development professionals.
Most participants are mid-career with 5+ years' experience, but it's not required. We’re looking for ambitious, action-oriented people who want to work on pressing problems.
What you'll get
Evaluate your options
We help you decide which types of roles to aim for, suggest high-impact opportunities aligned with your skills, and challenge blind spots in your thinking.
Build your network for impact-focused roles
Meet other experienced professionals who are pivoting their careers to working on the world's most pressing problems in their next role.
Feedback on CVs
Draft, get feedback, and iterate on CVs and application materials; we’ll support you in leveraging your skills to tackle pressing problems.
Real progress — not just ideas
Find roles, projects, or paths where your expertise is most needed, then send applications, make pitches, or network with employers.
Q&As with career pivoters
Anna Weldon
Chief Operating Officer at the Centre for Effective Altruism
Former Director of Human Resources at a ~$100M annual revenue, 1,000+ employee sustainable fashion company.
Joe Maddens
Managing Director at Consultants for Impact
Former consultant at McKinsey and CEO of an Independent Consulting Firm.
Rebecca Rolapp
Operations Associate at the Market Shaping Accelerator. Former Senior Product Manager at BidX1 and Technical Project Manager at Tesla.
Abraham Rowe
Director of Operations at the Centre for Governance of AI
Former founder of a nonprofit operations consultancy and fractional COO.
We partner with impact-focused careers services to support you with your next steps after the bootcamp
Choose your schedule
We offer two formats to fit your schedule.
4-DAY intensive bootcamp
Four consecutive weekdays, 5-8 hours PER DAY
15th-18th December
Ideal if you can take a week off for focused, rapid progress.
4-WEEK flexible bootcamp
Four consecutive weeks, 5-8 hours PER WEEK
7th Feb-7th March
Progress your high-impact career pivot without taking time off work and more reflection time.
Both formats cover the same content - choose what works best for you. We may run additional program dates, depending on demand and staff capacity.
What you'll do
Day/week 1
Scout high-impact paths
Shortlist cause areas and opportunities aligned with your skills
Day/week 2
Focus and prioritize
Choose top directions and specific roles to pursue.
Day/week 3
Take action
Fire off applications, send intro requests, or scope out a project
Day/week 4
Make it real
Address any blockers, set clear goals, and create accountability for ongoing progress
You'll work through targeted exercises, collaborate with other participants, and take concrete action on your career goals. You can see the last program’s content drafts here – you’ll spend most of your time and make most of your progress on independent activities like these.
Testimonials from previous bootcamps
“The experience broadened my sense of what’s possible: I now see at least two paths I hadn’t seriously considered or had written off as beyond my capabilities — working as a software engineer at an effective charity, or pivoting towards AI safety research or engineering. Motivation was one of my main reasons for joining, and the structure and peer energy have helped a lot on that front.”
— Joe
“My next steps feel clearer and I have a few specific opportunities to pursue. What’s more, I feel more energised to do this - from the activities but also more importantly, from meeting similarly motivated people. I've also expanded my backup options and have more awareness of some unconventional paths to take, like support for setting up a new charity myself.”
— Yi Peng
“The program has helped me go from a general sense that I might like to do something impact-related to a specific plan that seems likely to lead to real, concrete opportunities. I have a much clearer idea of which causes I'd like to focus on, and as a result, which types of organizations I should target. I also know that I need to increase my level of context in those specific areas, and have specific resources on hand for doing so.”
— Robert
“Being surrounded by others who consistently showed up and engaged meaningfully helped me stay accountable. The consistent pacing and back-to-back assignments created a rhythm that made feedback both timely and relevant. It’s short, intense, and gives you a focused burst of momentum. You’ll come away with a few practical tools to help clarify your thinking about your next steps and job search direction.”
— Cibeles
“The career bootcamp provided excellent curated resources and the chance to learn from a diverse group of smart, ambitious people. The program shifted my thinking about high-impact careers to a more flexible view that makes meaningful work feel more achievable. I also learned that I don't need to have my next ten steps figured out to take the first one, which helped me set aside some of my perfectionism around career decisions.”
— Raminta
Alumni of our previous programs work at
(The bootcamp is new. These examples are from our Introductory EA program and other courses.)
Meet the team
Jamie Harris
After graduating with a first-class degree in history from the University of Oxford, Jamie taught for several years, before realising that he could achieve more impact elsewhere. He pivoted his career, becoming a researcher at a think tank investigating long-term social and technological change. From there, he co-founded Animal Advocacy Careers and Leaf, two nonprofits working to help individuals make positive impacts over the course of their careers. He has also worked as a grantmaker at the EA Infrastructure Fund and Macroscopic Ventures.
Cian Mullarkey
Cian works on strategy and operations for the courses team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. Previously, he ran the Effective Altruism groups at Trinity College Dublin and New York University, where he graduated with a first class degree in Mathematics and Economics. He also worked as the team lead for the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative Summer Fellowship.
Christine Chitongo
Christine has a decade of experience in corporate and public affairs, currently heads external affairs for a 745-employee manufacturing company, and chairs two industry associations representing 22 companies. Her coalition-building and policy advocacy helped prevent company shutdowns and drive 129% employment growth in her sector. She is now applying her corporate governance expertise to AI governance challenges, earning special recognition for a project on AI Risk Spillover, plus co-founding and leading the AI Collective Harare chapter.
Brendan Chan
After starting his career as a high school math teacher, Brendan went on to work at Google for nine years on various global operations, education, and social impact teams. He has worked for various nonprofit organizations, political campaigns, and a family office focused on education philanthropy. In 2025, he completed his Doctorate of Education Leadership from Harvard.
Cameron King
Cameron has founded and scaled multiple organizations from the ground up. He co-founded Animal Advocacy Africa, building its operations to develop a collaborative advocacy movement across the continent, and co-founded Hive to create coordination platforms for advocates. As Head of Operations at Credence Institute, he built operational infrastructure to advance animal advocacy and alternative proteins. Cameron also ran an e-commerce business and has completed two incubation programs with Ambitious Impact on high-impact organizational development.
FAQ
What will the program involve day-to-day?
The program is built around making progress every day through three core activities:
- Independent activities: You'll work through exercises and resources designed to help you clarify, pursue, and land your next high-impact opportunity.
- Meet people: Calls with the other participants and opportunities for discussion on our Slack.
- Get feedback: Give and get feedback on your plans and drafts from peers and our team.
Why is the bootcamp free?
Our donors cover the cost because they are keen to support talented people to work on the world’s most pressing problems.
We want to help you land opportunities that have unusually important and positive effects on others, following from the principles of effective altruism; our content and staff will be both opinionated and open-minded about how you can best achieve that, and we hope you will be too.
What do you mean by a high-impact career? What are some examples of successful pivots?
We mean careers that make an unusually large, positive contribution; focusing on the world’s most pressing problems and the most promising interventions to tackle them, identified through reason and evidence. Some of your career options probably have 100x the impact of others, and we want to help you find those top, most impactful few.
You can read examples of experienced professionals’ transitions into high-impact careers from the Effective Altruism Forum’s Career Conversations Week:
- Martyn James: From Google to co-founding a global health charity
- Kathleen Perell: From corporate law to nonprofit operations
- Patrick Gruban: From startups and consulting to EA community building
- Cameron Holmes: From finance software to AI x-risk research management
You can find more examples in the book Moral Ambition and on the 80,000 Hours podcast.
Do I need to know about effective altruism?
You need to be interested in making a positive impact through your career, and open-minded to unconventional methods for how best to achieve that, but you don’t need to be familiar with effective altruism.
We may ask you to read, watch, or listen to some materials in the runup to the program so that you can benefit fully from it.
If you’d find it more useful to carefully explore effective altruism and think through the best opportunities for positive impact, we recommend our introductory or in-depth EA programs instead. For a cohort-based career planning program with a longer timeframe, we also recommend High Impact Professionals’ 6-week Impact Accelerator Program.
What are the requirements to participate?
This program is for operations professionals & organizational leaders. It is an immersive experience requiring 5-8 hours per day. You will need to ensure you can clear your schedule to maximize your progress on your high-impact career pivot. This time estimate includes all the required activities – the independent, interactive, and iterative elements, not just the virtual calls (which will only last 1-2 hours per day).
You also need a reliable internet connection, English language skills sufficient to constructively engage in group discussions, and to be over 18 years of age. Entry may also be competitive; see “Who it’s for” for what we’ll be looking for.
When are the interactive calls? Will it work for my timezone?
We expect to run two calls per day; one at 8am GMT and one at 4pm GMT. This should work for all timezones, as long as you genuinely take time off to clear your schedule; it will be morning for the Americas, evening for East Asia or Oceania, and the areas in between will have a choice.
Is this for me if I’m still unsure about changing careers?
Yes — you’ll gain clarity on whether a pivot makes sense, and what kind of change is actually possible. We’ve found that people who hadn’t yet started actively seeking out new opportunities were among those who benefited most from participating in our programs.
But we expect participants to take meaningful steps to explore their options in the program.
Will I get a certificate?
Yes, but more importantly, you’ll leave the program with useful outputs, like an improved CV that better demonstrates how your skills and experience can be leveraged for impact and translated into a new context.
Are there other dates available?
We ask on the application form about other dates you are available (especially in January 2026), in case we have demand and staff capacity to run further cohorts. We can’t make any promises here though. And we’re not yet sure if it will run again afterwards; if you’re interested, best to apply now.
