Leadership change at the Center on Long-Term Risk

# Leadership change at the Center on Long-Term Risk 
By JesseClifton, Tristan Cook, Mia_Taylor
Published: 2025-01-31
The [Center on Long-Term Risk](https://longtermrisk.org/) (CLR) does research and community building aimed at reducing [s-risk](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/s-risk). 

Jesse Clifton is stepping down as CLR’s Executive Director. He’ll be succeeded by Tristan Cook as Managing Director and Mia Taylor as Interim Research Director. [^uxy6vuo0it]

### Statement from Jesse

Over the past year or so, I’ve become increasingly convinced by arguments that we are [clueless](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GWya8sJzsy9xLpdX6/summary-maximal-cluelessness-andreas-mogensen) about the sign (in terms of expected total suffering reduced) of interventions aimed at reducing s-risk. (And I think it’s plausible that we should consider ourselves clueless about interventions aimed at improved expected total welfare, generally.) The other researchers on CLR’s Conceptual Research team[^v30hoksoavr] have come to a similar view,[^o95f1xsz36r] but not the other staff or the board, who are still positive on the pre-cluelessness priorities. 

Given this, I don’t think it makes sense for me to lead CLR. So, for now, I’ll be transitioning to working part-time at CLR (largely, helping with the transition to new leadership) and part-time at [Polaris Ventures](https://polaris-ventures.org/), where I’ll be leading on animal welfare grantmaking and helping with Polaris’ AI-related grantmaking. (Polaris hasn’t updated their views on cluelessness, but is starting some small-scale animal welfare grantmaking as a form of [worldview diversification](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/worldview-diversification/).) I think animal welfare work is more likely to be recommended by my all-things-considered normative views than what I’ve been doing, though I’m not confident that cluelessness doesn’t undermine this, too. Besides that, I still value s-risk reducers succeeding by their own epistemic standards, and plan to continue contributing as a member of the s-risk community.

This decision wasn’t made lightly. For the past six years, I’ve thought that working on s-risk reduction was the most important thing in the world, and acted accordingly. I’ve only decided to change direction after a lot of (I hope) careful thought and discussion over the past year or so. Concluding that I can’t expect to reduce s-risk in the way I had hoped comes with no small sense of loss. And, I’m personally quite sad to be reducing my involvement with CLR. It’s a pretty amazing place as far as moral and epistemic seriousness goes, and I like to think I’ve grown a lot in my time here, thanks to the people I’ve gotten to work with. On the other hand, I’m excited to get to work with Polaris, which has a great team and where I’ll be challenged in a role pretty different to my current one. 

Regarding the new leadership: I think very highly of Tristan and Mia, and I’m excited fo

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