All of Ruth Grace Wong's Comments + Replies
Eli Dourado AMA
Hi Eli! You told me a little about this the last time we chatted in person, and I'd love to hear more: Could ould you elaborate a little more on your "theory of change"? That is, how do you see your day to day work resulting in the kind of improvements you want to see?
And for experienced working professionals looking to maybe make a more impactful career switch: any underrated or not well known career paths that you wished more people embarked on that could help? And any particular industry backgrounds/expertise that you wish were more involved in the policy conversations?
42yAs a writer: influencing other people, building consensus on what the problems
are, building a network of people that are aligned.
As a researcher: coming up with highly-specific policy solutions to an important
problem. Ideally, this would be a small, non-controversial provision that
someone could slip into a bill unnoticed.
So for example, I have written a lot about the problems with NEPA and
permitting, and I think there's been a consensus developed among a big chunk of
the political spectrum that it's a real problem and we need to fix it. At the
same time, I have been trying to push a specific fix for geothermal permitting,
which is to give it the same categorical exclusion that oil and gas has.
Two different kinds of change, and I try to do both, but succeeding at the
latter is rare and extremely valuable such that if you do it only a few times in
your life that is a successful career.
On career switching: I would advise people to look less at creating a coherent
career, where there is a logical progression from one step to the next, and to
instead just find a job that interests and inspires you to do your very best
work. My own career has been pretty haphazard: I was going to be a professor,
then no just kidding I'm going to do nonprofit policy research, then oh no I am
going to work at a startup, then back to policy research. None of this was part
of a deliberate plan.
One heuristic that I think works well:
1. What do you think is the single most interesting thing going on right now?
2. How can you put yourself at the center of that thing?
I'm also curious to know if you think that centralization, the way that other movements (I'm thinking of effective altruism) have specific cause area prioritizations that proponents tend to follow, is a good or a bad thing. In your opinion, what qualities make an effective modern movement that can actually get things done?