Governments and other powerful institutions are often crucial forces in addressing pressing global problems, so learning to navigate, improve and assist these institutions is a route to having a big impact. Moreover, there are many positions that offer a good network and a high potential for impact relative to how competitive they are.
- No location available
-

This skill set is fairly broad, which means it can potentially be a good fit for a wide variety of people. For many roles, indications of fit include being fairly social and comfortable in a political environment — but this isn’t true for all roles, and if you feel like that’s not you it could still be worth trying out something in the area.
- No location available
-

National governments are hugely powerful.For a start, they command the spending of huge sums of money. The US government’s federal budget is approximately $6.4 trillion/year — that’s approximately the annual revenue of the world’s 14 largest companies by revenue (although only around $1.7 trillion/year is discretionary spending). Many other Western countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year.And it’s not just money. Governments produce laws governing the actions of millions — or billions — and have unique tools at their disposal, including taxation and tax breaks, regulation, antitrust actions, and, ultimately, the use of force.
- No location available
-

Biorisk: The UK government released the UK Biological Security Strategy aimed at preventing future pandemics in June 2023. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works on public health in the US and is also one of the most important organisations working on global disease control. The US defence and intelligence community also works in this area. For instance, the Department of Defense does a lot of work on infectious diseases and assists other countries’ efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons.
- No location available
-

For example, in the US, there are 535 members of Congress and around 4,000 presidential appointees in the executive branch. That might sound like a lot, but think about it this way: each of these people, on average, has oversight over about 0.02% of the US federal budget — over $1 billion. It would be literally impossible to micromanage that amount of activity.This is only a very rough heuristic, but by dividing the $1.7 trillion discretionary federal budget by the number of people at different levels of seniority, we can estimate the average budget that different subsets of people in the government oversee.2
- No location available
-
- [note::Wow - this really puts things into perspective. The table below this annotation indicates there are roughly $700k for each of the 2.3M federal employees employed by the government.]

Nevertheless, these figures are so high that if you can help those budgets be used just a little more efficiently, it could be worth millions of dollars of additional spending in the area of focus.And, in other ways, this is an underestimate of the responsibility of each individual because much of what the government does is not best thought of as setting budgets — rather it comes from regulation, foreign policy, changing social norms and so on. Budgets here are just being used as a proxy for one form of impact.
- No location available
-

In the US, we spoke to a number of mid-level and senior federal employees, and most were able to give us an example of how they had a large positive impact through their role. Some of their examples involved starting new impactful programs worth $10s of millions, saving Americans $100s of millions, or moving billions to something potentially more impactful. We haven’t vetted these stories, but at the very least they persuaded us that mid-level and senior federal employees feel as though they can sometimes have a large positive influence on the government.
- No location available
-

Often this work is done by very junior people. One junior staff member in a Congressional office told us that more senior individuals (like Chiefs of Staff) are often tasked with substantial managerial responsibilities that crowd out their ability to focus on nitty-gritty policy research. Because of this, they have to defer to more junior staff (such as legislative assistants) who have the capacity and time to dig into a specific policy area and make concrete proposals.
- No location available
-

This all suggests that you can effect change in large institutions (even when you’re just getting started), and in particular:On issues where people care enough for changes to be made, but not enough to micromanage the changesWhere powerful figures like elected officials have vague goals, but no specific idea of what they wantWhen details have a large impact, e.g. the details of one piece of legislation can affect many other laws
- No location available
-

But the potential for change is there. You can think of decision making in large institutions as a negotiation between different groups with power. Most of the time you won’t tip the balance, but occasionally you might be able to — and it could have a large impact.
- No location available
-

Unfortunately, the more you advance, the easier it is to lose touch with people who will give you frank feedback, and the more temptations you’ll face to do unethical or dishonest actions in order to preserve your influence or “for the greater good” — i.e. to get corrupted.This means we’d especially encourage people considering this path to focus on building good character and making sure they have friends around them who can keep them honest at the early stages, so these are in place in case they gain a lot of influence.
- No location available
-

This typically involves the following steps:Identify some institutions that could play an important role tackling some of the problems you think are most pressing. See an introduction to comparing global problems in terms of impact and lists of institutions that are important to each area in our problem profiles and job board.Learn to make useful contributions to an institution (or group of institutions) by gaining experience, credibility, seniority, and authority.Often, it involves developing a speciality that’s especially relevant to the problems you want to focus on. For instance, if you want to work on tackling engineered pandemics, you might specialise in counter-terrorism, technology policy, or biomedical policy. This is both to help you advance into more relevant roles, but also to improve your understanding of which policies are actually helpful. That said, many policy makers remain generalists. In that case, you need to make sure you find trusted expert advisors to help you understand which policy changes would be most helpful.Move into roles that put you in a better position to help tackle these problems. Focusing on pandemics again, you might aim to work at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and then advance to more senior positions.Have an impact by using your position and expertise to improve policies and practices relevant to pressing global problems or bringing attention to neglected but important priorities.
- No location available
-

In addition to roles actually within the relevant institutions, there are also “influencer” roles which aim to shape these institutions from the outside.This includes jobs in think tanks, advocacy non-profits, journalism, academia, and even corporations, rather than within government.The skills needed for influencer roles are similar to those needed for policy and political roles in many ways, but they also overlap a lot with skills in research and communicating ideas. These roles can be a better fit for someone who wants to work in a smaller organisation, is less comfortable with political culture, or wants to focus more on ideas rather than application.
- No location available
-

This skill set is fairly broad, which also means it can potentially be a good fit for a wide variety of people. Don’t rule it out based on a hazy sense that government work isn’t for you!For example, entering policy through building specific expertise can be a good fit for people interested in research careers but who would like to do something more practical. Many roles are totally unlike the stereotype of a politician endlessly shaking hands or what ‘government bureaucrat’ brings to mind.
- No location available
- career development, policy,

You have the potential to succeed at relationship-building and fitting in. In many of these roles, you need to be able to develop good relationships with a wide range of people in a short amount of time, come across as competent and warm in your interactions, genuinely want to add value and help others achieve their goals, consistently follow up and stay in touch with people, and build a reputation and be remembered.It helps to have empathy and social intelligence so that you can model other people’s viewpoints and needs accurately. It also helps if you can remember small details about people! You don’t necessarily need all these skills when you start out, but you should be interested in improving them.These skills are most important in more public-facing party-political positions and are also needed to work in large institutions. However, there are also roles focused more on applying technical expertise to policy, which don’t require these skills as much (though they’re still probably more important than in e.g. academia).
- No location available
-

You can think of a relevant institution at which you can imagine yourself being relatively happy, productive, and motivated for a long time — while playing by the institution’s rules. Try speaking with later-career people at the institution to get as detailed a sense as possible of how long it will take to reach the kind of position you’re hoping for, what your day-to-day life will be like in the meantime, and what you will need to do to succeed.
- No location available
-

Being comfortable with political culture. The culture in politics, especially US federal politics, can be difficult to navigate. Some people we know have entered promising policy positions, but later felt like the culture was a terrible fit for them. Experts we’ve spoken to say that, in Washington, DC, there’s a big cultural focus on networking and internal bureaucratic politics to navigate. We’ve also been told that while merit matters to a degree in US government work, it is not the primary determinant of who is most successful. We’d expect this to be similar in other countries. People who think they wouldn’t feel able or comfortable to be in this kind of environment for the long term should consider whether other skills or institutions would be a better fit.
- No location available
-

Also, if you work on a hot button, highly partisan issue, you’re much more likely to be exposed to intense political dynamics than if you work on more niche, technocratic, or cross-party issues.
- No location available
-

First, ask yourself “How quickly and impressively is my career advancing, by the standards of the institution I’m currently focused on?” People with more experience (and advancement) at the institution will often be able to help you get a clear idea of how this is going. (It’s also just generally important to have good enough relationships with some experienced people to get honest input from them — this is an additional indicator of whether you’re “on track” in most situations.)
- No location available
-

Another relevant question to ask is “How sustainable does this feel?” This question is relevant for all skills, but especially here — for government and policy roles, one of the main things that affects how well you advance is simply how long you can stick with it and how consistently you meet the institution’s explicit and implicit expectations. So, if you find you can enjoy government and political work, that’s a big sign you’re on track.
- No location available
-

There are two main ways you might get started:Institution-first. You’d start your career by trying to find a set of institutions that are a good fit for you and that seems at least relevant to the problems you think are most pressing (e.g. the executive branch of the US government or tech companies). You’d then try to move up the ranks of those institutions.Expertise-first. In this route, you initially focus on building a relevant speciality or area of expertise (e.g. in academia or think tanks) and then use that to switch into institutional positions later. In addition, people with impressive credentials and accomplishments outside of government (e.g. in business, consulting, or law) can sometimes enter important departments and agencies at particularly senior and influential levels.
- No location available
-
- [note::Institute-first approach seems more fitting to me]

As always, whether these paths are a good way of building your skills depends on the specific job or programme and people you’ll be working with:Will you get good mentorship?What’s their reputation in the field?Do they have good character?Does their policy agenda seem positive?Will the culture be a good fit for you?
- No location available
-

In the US, consider the Presidential Management Fellows for recent graduates of advanced degrees, the Horizon Fellowship, the AAAS fellowship for people with science PhDs or engineering master’s, or the TechCongress fellowship for mid-career tech professionals. If you have completed a STEM graduate degree, also consider the Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program.
- No location available
-

Choosing a graduate school near or close to DC is often a good idea, especially if you’re hoping to work part- or even full-time in public policy alongside graduate school.
- No location available
-

Many academic institutions in the US offer a “Semester in DC” programme, which can let you explore placements of choice in Congress, federal agencies, or think tanks. The Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) also offers part-time, remote government internships.
- No location available
-

You don’t strictly need a master’s or other advanced degree to work in the US Congress. But many staffers still eventually pursue a graduate degree, in part because federal agencies and think tanks commonly care more about formal credentials, and many congressional staffers at some point switch to these institutions.
- No location available
-

You can also work for a politician on a particular campaign — some of the top people who work on winning campaigns eventually get high-impact positions in the federal government. This is a high-risk strategy: it often only pays off if your candidate wins, and even then, not everybody on the campaign staff will get influential jobs or jobs in the areas they care about, especially if you’re a junior campaign staffer. (Running for office yourself involves a similar high-risk, high-reward dynamic.)
- No location available
-

most people have told us that, in the US, it’s even better to get a graduate degree first because it will allow you to reach higher levels of career advancement and seniority more quickly. A graduate degree could also qualify you for fellowships.
- No location available
-

Also, think tank staff are often fairly cleanly split between entry-level employees and senior employees with advanced degrees (often PhDs), with relatively few mid-level roles. For this reason, it’s fairly uncommon for people to stay and rise through the ranks at a think tank without leaving for graduate school or another role.
- No location available
-

Depending on the issue and your position, you might then seek to have an impact via:Improving the implementation of policy relevant to a pressing problem. For example, you could work at an agency regulating synthetic biology.Gathering support for policy ideas. For example, you could highlight the top areas of consensus in the field about promising ways the government could reduce global poverty to a politician you work for.Coming up with ideas for new policies. For example, you might craft new proposals for implementing compute governance policies.
- No location available
- policy, career development, social impact,

When people think about political careers, they usually think of people in suits having long debates about what to do.But fundamentally, a policy is only an idea. For an idea to have an impact, someone actually has to carry it out.
- No location available
-

many policies are by necessity, only defined vaguely. For instance, a set of drug safety standards might need to show there is “reasonable evidence” a drug is safe, but — as shown by Frances Kelsey — how that is interpreted is left up to the relevant agency and may even change over time.Many details are often left undecided when the policy is created, and again, these get filled out by government employees.This option especially requires skills like people and project management, planning, coordination in and out of government, communication, resource allocation, training, and more.So, if you can become great at one or more of these things (and really know your way around the institution you work in), it’s worth trying to identify large projects that might help solve the problems you think are most pressing — and then helping them run better.
- No location available
-
- [note::This seems like an angle I might be able to take - being someone who can work out the finer details of policy implementations or help ensure the implementation goes smoothly (given my interests in project management & coordination)]

One way to have an impact is to help get issues “on the agenda” by getting the attention and buy-in of important people.For example, when politicians take office, they often enter on a platform of promises made to their constituents and their supporters about which policy agendas they want to pursue. They can be, to varying degrees, problem-specific — for example, having a broad remit of “improving health care.” Or, it could be more solution-specific — for example, aiming to create a single-payer health system or remove red tape facing critical industries. These agendas are formed through public discussion, media narratives, internal party politics, deliberative debate, interest group advocacy, and other forms of input. Using any of these ways to get something on the agenda is a great way to help make sure it happens.You can contribute to this process in political advisory positions (e.g. being a staffer for a congressperson) or through influencer positions, such as think tanks.
- No location available
-

As a rule of thumb, if you’re working within an institution (such as a large corporation or a government department), you want to be as senior as possible while still being responsible for a specific set of issues. In such a position, you’ll be in contact with all the key stakeholders, from the most senior people to those more on your level.
- No location available
-

Policy creation is a long process, often starting from broad intellectual ideas, which are iteratively developed into more practical proposals by think tanks, civil servants, political parties, advocates, and others, and then adjusted in response to their reception by peers, the media and the electorate, as well as political reality at the time.Once concrete policy options are on the table, they must be put through the relevant decision-making process and negotiations. In countries with strong judicial review like the US, special attention often has to be paid to make sure laws and regulations will hold up under the scrutiny of the courts.
- No location available
-

For more details on the complex work of policy creation, we recommend Thomas Kalil’s article Policy Entrepreneurship in the White House: Getting Things Done in Large Organisations.
- No location available
-

Podcast: Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years’ experience in the White House
- No location available
-

Governments and other powerful institutions are often crucial forces in addressing pressing global problems, so learning to navigate, improve and assist these institutions is a route to having a big impact. Moreover, there are many positions that offer a good network and a high potential for impact relative to how competitive they are.
- No location available
-

This skill set is fairly broad, which means it can potentially be a good fit for a wide variety of people. For many roles, indications of fit include being fairly social and comfortable in a political environment — but this isn’t true for all roles, and if you feel like that’s not you it could still be worth trying out something in the area.
- No location available
-

National governments are hugely powerful.For a start, they command the spending of huge sums of money. The US government’s federal budget is approximately $6.4 trillion/year — that’s approximately the annual revenue of the world’s 14 largest companies by revenue (although only around $1.7 trillion/year is discretionary spending). Many other Western countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year.And it’s not just money. Governments produce laws governing the actions of millions — or billions — and have unique tools at their disposal, including taxation and tax breaks, regulation, antitrust actions, and, ultimately, the use of force.
- No location available
-

Biorisk: The UK government released the UK Biological Security Strategy aimed at preventing future pandemics in June 2023. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works on public health in the US and is also one of the most important organisations working on global disease control. The US defence and intelligence community also works in this area. For instance, the Department of Defense does a lot of work on infectious diseases and assists other countries’ efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons.
- No location available
-

For example, in the US, there are 535 members of Congress and around 4,000 presidential appointees in the executive branch. That might sound like a lot, but think about it this way: each of these people, on average, has oversight over about 0.02% of the US federal budget — over $1 billion. It would be literally impossible to micromanage that amount of activity.This is only a very rough heuristic, but by dividing the $1.7 trillion discretionary federal budget by the number of people at different levels of seniority, we can estimate the average budget that different subsets of people in the government oversee.2
- No location available
-
- [note::Wow - this really puts things into perspective. The table below this annotation indicates there are roughly $700k for each of the 2.3M federal employees employed by the government.]

Nevertheless, these figures are so high that if you can help those budgets be used just a little more efficiently, it could be worth millions of dollars of additional spending in the area of focus.And, in other ways, this is an underestimate of the responsibility of each individual because much of what the government does is not best thought of as setting budgets — rather it comes from regulation, foreign policy, changing social norms and so on. Budgets here are just being used as a proxy for one form of impact.
- No location available
-

In the US, we spoke to a number of mid-level and senior federal employees, and most were able to give us an example of how they had a large positive impact through their role. Some of their examples involved starting new impactful programs worth $10s of millions, saving Americans $100s of millions, or moving billions to something potentially more impactful. We haven’t vetted these stories, but at the very least they persuaded us that mid-level and senior federal employees feel as though they can sometimes have a large positive influence on the government.
- No location available
-

Often this work is done by very junior people. One junior staff member in a Congressional office told us that more senior individuals (like Chiefs of Staff) are often tasked with substantial managerial responsibilities that crowd out their ability to focus on nitty-gritty policy research. Because of this, they have to defer to more junior staff (such as legislative assistants) who have the capacity and time to dig into a specific policy area and make concrete proposals.
- No location available
-

This all suggests that you can effect change in large institutions (even when you’re just getting started), and in particular:On issues where people care enough for changes to be made, but not enough to micromanage the changesWhere powerful figures like elected officials have vague goals, but no specific idea of what they wantWhen details have a large impact, e.g. the details of one piece of legislation can affect many other laws
- No location available
-

But the potential for change is there. You can think of decision making in large institutions as a negotiation between different groups with power. Most of the time you won’t tip the balance, but occasionally you might be able to — and it could have a large impact.
- No location available
-

Unfortunately, the more you advance, the easier it is to lose touch with people who will give you frank feedback, and the more temptations you’ll face to do unethical or dishonest actions in order to preserve your influence or “for the greater good” — i.e. to get corrupted.This means we’d especially encourage people considering this path to focus on building good character and making sure they have friends around them who can keep them honest at the early stages, so these are in place in case they gain a lot of influence.
- No location available
-

This typically involves the following steps:Identify some institutions that could play an important role tackling some of the problems you think are most pressing. See an introduction to comparing global problems in terms of impact and lists of institutions that are important to each area in our problem profiles and job board.Learn to make useful contributions to an institution (or group of institutions) by gaining experience, credibility, seniority, and authority.Often, it involves developing a speciality that’s especially relevant to the problems you want to focus on. For instance, if you want to work on tackling engineered pandemics, you might specialise in counter-terrorism, technology policy, or biomedical policy. This is both to help you advance into more relevant roles, but also to improve your understanding of which policies are actually helpful. That said, many policy makers remain generalists. In that case, you need to make sure you find trusted expert advisors to help you understand which policy changes would be most helpful.Move into roles that put you in a better position to help tackle these problems. Focusing on pandemics again, you might aim to work at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and then advance to more senior positions.Have an impact by using your position and expertise to improve policies and practices relevant to pressing global problems or bringing attention to neglected but important priorities.
- No location available
-

In addition to roles actually within the relevant institutions, there are also “influencer” roles which aim to shape these institutions from the outside.This includes jobs in think tanks, advocacy non-profits, journalism, academia, and even corporations, rather than within government.The skills needed for influencer roles are similar to those needed for policy and political roles in many ways, but they also overlap a lot with skills in research and communicating ideas. These roles can be a better fit for someone who wants to work in a smaller organisation, is less comfortable with political culture, or wants to focus more on ideas rather than application.
- No location available
-

This skill set is fairly broad, which also means it can potentially be a good fit for a wide variety of people. Don’t rule it out based on a hazy sense that government work isn’t for you!For example, entering policy through building specific expertise can be a good fit for people interested in research careers but who would like to do something more practical. Many roles are totally unlike the stereotype of a politician endlessly shaking hands or what ‘government bureaucrat’ brings to mind.
- No location available
- career development, policy,

You have the potential to succeed at relationship-building and fitting in. In many of these roles, you need to be able to develop good relationships with a wide range of people in a short amount of time, come across as competent and warm in your interactions, genuinely want to add value and help others achieve their goals, consistently follow up and stay in touch with people, and build a reputation and be remembered.It helps to have empathy and social intelligence so that you can model other people’s viewpoints and needs accurately. It also helps if you can remember small details about people! You don’t necessarily need all these skills when you start out, but you should be interested in improving them.These skills are most important in more public-facing party-political positions and are also needed to work in large institutions. However, there are also roles focused more on applying technical expertise to policy, which don’t require these skills as much (though they’re still probably more important than in e.g. academia).
- No location available
-

You can think of a relevant institution at which you can imagine yourself being relatively happy, productive, and motivated for a long time — while playing by the institution’s rules. Try speaking with later-career people at the institution to get as detailed a sense as possible of how long it will take to reach the kind of position you’re hoping for, what your day-to-day life will be like in the meantime, and what you will need to do to succeed.
- No location available
-

Being comfortable with political culture. The culture in politics, especially US federal politics, can be difficult to navigate. Some people we know have entered promising policy positions, but later felt like the culture was a terrible fit for them. Experts we’ve spoken to say that, in Washington, DC, there’s a big cultural focus on networking and internal bureaucratic politics to navigate. We’ve also been told that while merit matters to a degree in US government work, it is not the primary determinant of who is most successful. We’d expect this to be similar in other countries. People who think they wouldn’t feel able or comfortable to be in this kind of environment for the long term should consider whether other skills or institutions would be a better fit.
- No location available
-

Also, if you work on a hot button, highly partisan issue, you’re much more likely to be exposed to intense political dynamics than if you work on more niche, technocratic, or cross-party issues.
- No location available
-

First, ask yourself “How quickly and impressively is my career advancing, by the standards of the institution I’m currently focused on?” People with more experience (and advancement) at the institution will often be able to help you get a clear idea of how this is going. (It’s also just generally important to have good enough relationships with some experienced people to get honest input from them — this is an additional indicator of whether you’re “on track” in most situations.)
- No location available
-

Another relevant question to ask is “How sustainable does this feel?” This question is relevant for all skills, but especially here — for government and policy roles, one of the main things that affects how well you advance is simply how long you can stick with it and how consistently you meet the institution’s explicit and implicit expectations. So, if you find you can enjoy government and political work, that’s a big sign you’re on track.
- No location available
-

There are two main ways you might get started:Institution-first. You’d start your career by trying to find a set of institutions that are a good fit for you and that seems at least relevant to the problems you think are most pressing (e.g. the executive branch of the US government or tech companies). You’d then try to move up the ranks of those institutions.Expertise-first. In this route, you initially focus on building a relevant speciality or area of expertise (e.g. in academia or think tanks) and then use that to switch into institutional positions later. In addition, people with impressive credentials and accomplishments outside of government (e.g. in business, consulting, or law) can sometimes enter important departments and agencies at particularly senior and influential levels.
- No location available
-
- [note::Institute-first approach seems more fitting to me]

As always, whether these paths are a good way of building your skills depends on the specific job or programme and people you’ll be working with:Will you get good mentorship?What’s their reputation in the field?Do they have good character?Does their policy agenda seem positive?Will the culture be a good fit for you?
- No location available
-

In the US, consider the Presidential Management Fellows for recent graduates of advanced degrees, the Horizon Fellowship, the AAAS fellowship for people with science PhDs or engineering master’s, or the TechCongress fellowship for mid-career tech professionals. If you have completed a STEM graduate degree, also consider the Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship Program.
- No location available
-

Choosing a graduate school near or close to DC is often a good idea, especially if you’re hoping to work part- or even full-time in public policy alongside graduate school.
- No location available
-

Many academic institutions in the US offer a “Semester in DC” programme, which can let you explore placements of choice in Congress, federal agencies, or think tanks. The Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) also offers part-time, remote government internships.
- No location available
-

You don’t strictly need a master’s or other advanced degree to work in the US Congress. But many staffers still eventually pursue a graduate degree, in part because federal agencies and think tanks commonly care more about formal credentials, and many congressional staffers at some point switch to these institutions.
- No location available
-

You can also work for a politician on a particular campaign — some of the top people who work on winning campaigns eventually get high-impact positions in the federal government. This is a high-risk strategy: it often only pays off if your candidate wins, and even then, not everybody on the campaign staff will get influential jobs or jobs in the areas they care about, especially if you’re a junior campaign staffer. (Running for office yourself involves a similar high-risk, high-reward dynamic.)
- No location available
-

most people have told us that, in the US, it’s even better to get a graduate degree first because it will allow you to reach higher levels of career advancement and seniority more quickly. A graduate degree could also qualify you for fellowships.
- No location available
-

Also, think tank staff are often fairly cleanly split between entry-level employees and senior employees with advanced degrees (often PhDs), with relatively few mid-level roles. For this reason, it’s fairly uncommon for people to stay and rise through the ranks at a think tank without leaving for graduate school or another role.
- No location available
-

Depending on the issue and your position, you might then seek to have an impact via:Improving the implementation of policy relevant to a pressing problem. For example, you could work at an agency regulating synthetic biology.Gathering support for policy ideas. For example, you could highlight the top areas of consensus in the field about promising ways the government could reduce global poverty to a politician you work for.Coming up with ideas for new policies. For example, you might craft new proposals for implementing compute governance policies.
- No location available
- policy, career development, social impact,

When people think about political careers, they usually think of people in suits having long debates about what to do.But fundamentally, a policy is only an idea. For an idea to have an impact, someone actually has to carry it out.
- No location available
-

many policies are by necessity, only defined vaguely. For instance, a set of drug safety standards might need to show there is “reasonable evidence” a drug is safe, but — as shown by Frances Kelsey — how that is interpreted is left up to the relevant agency and may even change over time.Many details are often left undecided when the policy is created, and again, these get filled out by government employees.This option especially requires skills like people and project management, planning, coordination in and out of government, communication, resource allocation, training, and more.So, if you can become great at one or more of these things (and really know your way around the institution you work in), it’s worth trying to identify large projects that might help solve the problems you think are most pressing — and then helping them run better.
- No location available
-
- [note::This seems like an angle I might be able to take - being someone who can work out the finer details of policy implementations or help ensure the implementation goes smoothly (given my interests in project management & coordination)]

One way to have an impact is to help get issues “on the agenda” by getting the attention and buy-in of important people.For example, when politicians take office, they often enter on a platform of promises made to their constituents and their supporters about which policy agendas they want to pursue. They can be, to varying degrees, problem-specific — for example, having a broad remit of “improving health care.” Or, it could be more solution-specific — for example, aiming to create a single-payer health system or remove red tape facing critical industries. These agendas are formed through public discussion, media narratives, internal party politics, deliberative debate, interest group advocacy, and other forms of input. Using any of these ways to get something on the agenda is a great way to help make sure it happens.You can contribute to this process in political advisory positions (e.g. being a staffer for a congressperson) or through influencer positions, such as think tanks.
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As a rule of thumb, if you’re working within an institution (such as a large corporation or a government department), you want to be as senior as possible while still being responsible for a specific set of issues. In such a position, you’ll be in contact with all the key stakeholders, from the most senior people to those more on your level.
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Policy creation is a long process, often starting from broad intellectual ideas, which are iteratively developed into more practical proposals by think tanks, civil servants, political parties, advocates, and others, and then adjusted in response to their reception by peers, the media and the electorate, as well as political reality at the time.Once concrete policy options are on the table, they must be put through the relevant decision-making process and negotiations. In countries with strong judicial review like the US, special attention often has to be paid to make sure laws and regulations will hold up under the scrutiny of the courts.
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For more details on the complex work of policy creation, we recommend Thomas Kalil’s article Policy Entrepreneurship in the White House: Getting Things Done in Large Organisations.
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Podcast: Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years’ experience in the White House
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