I can answer for me! I’m a second year (class of 2024). I stumbled upon 80,000 hours back in November 2020, during my first semester, after some late night Googling about careers and social impact, and EA ideas ringed true for me pretty immediately. Penn was in a really weird state during COVID where a lot of clubs died out or didn’t maintain significant traction because people didn’t want to join clubs virtually. The club was previously led by Liam Alexander (who is still an organizer!) but during the online year, it was hard to find people who were motivated enough to participate in this community, and Liam was also working on a campaign and was extremely busy (he’s still very bottlenecked). Also, Penn EA was not connected to much of the EA network and CEA at this point: it needed a lot of love. I wasn’t aware that Penn EA existed as a club, or really that community building was a thing or that it was extremely important, until I did career advising at 80k with Habiba Islam. And especially until I later met Sydney and Thomas.

I met Sydney and Thomas after Sydney sent me a random Discord ping through the EA Philly Discord (run by Quinn McHugh). I met Sydney and Thomas in Center City (25 mins combined walking and subway) at their apartment and talked with them for about 8 hours (!!) about community building and Penn EA. Then I started tabling when I could and helping out, along with Ashley Lin and Akash Wasil (and Liam Alexander). We also have other board members who are fairly familiar with EA, but not as much as us 4.

Ashley is an incoming first year undergrad on a gap year with intended studies in computer science and business in the Jerome Fisher Management & Technology program. She graduated high school at 16 (!!) and has been doing her own thing for a few years, like writing her own book and founding some startups. She’s interested primarily in community building and EA meta initiatives (high school outreach!).

Akash is a 3rd year PhD in clinical psychology, who did his undergrad at Harvard, and has been involved with Penn One For The World previously. He’s interested in mental health initiatives and community building.

Liam is a 4th year undergrad in PPE and is highly interested in policy, especially AI policy and other policy interests related to existential risk initiatives.

And then I’m a 2nd year undergrad in physics, interested in a variety of research areas (s-risk reduction and grand futures primarily), entrepreneurial stuff in biotech related to aging, policy initiatives in existential risks, as well as EA meta stuff. So lots of career thinking and planning.

There’s also 2 others that are leading fellowship cohorts. Ollie Sayeed, a 5th year PhD in Linguistics, who did his undergrad at Cambridge. And Vivian, a 1st year PhD in bioengineering and machine learning, who did their undergrad at the University of Maryland.