BRIAN TAN · LONDON ⇄ MANILA
I’m a Headhunting Product Specialist at 80,000 Hours, where I help impactful organisations, primarily in AI safety, find great people to hire. In my spare time, I like working out, bouldering, watching sports highlights, and (over)optimizing my life. I'm based in London but am originally from Manila.
I've been optimizing for a high-impact career since 2018 after I discovered the effective altruism (EA) movement — using evidence and reason to help others as much as possible. I pivoted my career from product design to EA community-building, and then to AI safety field-building in pursuit of impact.
I aim to constantly improve myself, my work, and the world around me. I love optimizing my productivity and health, journaling and reflecting regularly, and getting feedback that helps me improve.
I have a well-organized to-do list for my professional and personal life, and I try to live life with high motivation and ownership for almost everything I do. It's easy for me to get enough sleep, eat healthily, and work with great care.
I enjoy learning new things, discussing intellectual topics, and gathering data on what's working and what's not, whether it's my sleep scores or the impact of my work.
I try to build healthy habits, good relationships, and organised systems to help me live a great life and do good work.
LAYER 04 — (HOPEFULLY) IMPACTFUL WORK
The foundations below help me bring my best self to do impactful work. I help organizations find good people to hire to help ensure our future with AI goes well.
Key influences: 80,000 Hours (where I now work!) and effective altruism
LAYER 03 — GOOD PRIORITIZATION AND SYSTEMS
I try to prioritize and systematize my life and work well. You might see me setting quarterly goals, planning my week on Motion, or tracking my finances on YNAB and Google Sheets.
Key influences: Tim Ferriss, Essentialism, and Atomic Habits
LAYER 02 — EMOTIONAL HEALTH AND RELATIONSHIPS
I like being attuned with my emotions and building good relationships with myself, my partner, my friends, and my family.
Key influences: Reading about IFS and the Build The Life You Want book
LAYER 01 — PHYSICAL HEALTH
Keeping myself healthy is a big passion. You might see me eating high-protein meals, wearing blue-light blocking glasses, working out, or indoor bouldering.
Key influences: The book Outlive and Dr. Rhonda Patrick
Headhunting Product Specialist
I use and improve 80,000 Hours' AI-powered product that helps other organisations (primarily in AI safety) find good candidates to hire. 80,000 Hours helps talented people move into careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems, especially making advanced AI safe and beneficial.
Operations Associate
I moved to London to work for Arcadia Impact, where I did generalist operations work, including helping with strategy and leadership. Arcadia Impact is a UK nonprofit that empowers people and organisations to tackle the most pressing global issues, with a focus on AI safety.
Co-founder and Operations Director
I co-founded WhiteBox Research, a nonprofit aiming to develop more AI interpretability and safety researchers in Asia. I led the operations and marketing of WhiteBox.
Group Support Contractor
I worked to provide support to EA groups around the world. CEA is an international non-profit that supports the growth of the effective altruism movement globally.
Co-Founder
I co-founded EA PH in 2018 as the Philippine chapter of the EA movement. I worked full-time to grow the community in 2021 while on a Community Building Grant from the Centre for Effective Altruism.
Senior Product Designer
I did UI/UX design for First Circle, a fintech startup in Manila providing financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Undergraduate Degree in BS IT Entrepreneurship
I studied in Ateneo on a full Merit Scholarship and graduated with Cum Laude honors.