Jan 25, 2025
I’m frequently asked for advice on how to break into the industry I’m in or how to achieve a position I’ve held. I’ve been privileged to serve in many interesting and varied roles across sectors, from small nonprofits and garage startups to huge multinationals and even the US Federal Government. While I personally owe a lot of my journey to privilege, luck, and the good graces of others, I know that “be lucky” isn’t particularly useful advice. In the spirit of providing something actionable, I’ve gathered here some reflections on things that I think have served me in my journey. I hope these reflections will be helpful for others on their journeys as well, and I encourage those with experience in this space to share more about their journeys, lessons learned, and advice too!
Note: For the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about “getting into AI policy” and offering some specific examples, but most of these suggestions should hold regardless of what it is specifically you want to do. For more on entering the tech policy field, see my Emerging Technology Policy Careers profile.
This series comes in five parts:
- Pay it forward (don’t skip this!)
Prefer to read everything as one long piece instead? i gotchu. 💖
Pay it forward (don't skip this!)
If you’ve made it here, congratulations! 🎉 There’s no “right way” to get into AI policy, so I hope that my reflections and suggestions have been helpful to you. Whatever your own journey, if you share your learnings and experiences along the way, you will probably find yourself getting lots of requests from other people who are interested in getting into this space. You are, of course, welcome to share this blog series with them, but I challenge you to do more.
After all, as I said in part 1:
That’s why in part 2, we recognized that:
The good news is—as we discussed in part 3:
Because, ultimately (part 4):
I believe we all have a responsibility to make it as easy as possible to do good in the world. I also believe that AI is a tremendously consequential technology that everyone should play a role in shaping. As such, I think that all of us who are in the AI policy space (whatever that means!) should do what we can to bring others along with us.
My own path into this space is absolutely thanks to others who brought me along with them. I am overwhelmed with gratitude to all the many, many people who helped me make it to where I am today. It’s still honestly a funkydunky feeling to realize that not only do people aspire to follow in my footsteps, but I actually have the power to help them realize their dreams and forge paths of their own. As I said at the start, “I personally owe a lot of my journey to privilege, luck, and the good graces of others,” and while I may not have much power over the first two things, I can definitely pay it forward on the last one.
And you can, too!
You don’t have to wait until the words “AI policy” are in your job title to start paying it forward, either. There are many ways to pay it forward. Some big and small. Wherever you are in your AI policy journey, I’ll bet you have something to offer.
Sometimes paying it forward looks life-changing like being able to offer a job opportunity to someone with nontraditional experience. Sometimes it’s something small, and maybe even mundane, like helping someone with directions in a new place. When it comes to lifting others up in the world of AI policy, you’ll encounter countless opportunities to be an ally and a champion and to advocate for others, but I think it helps to have some practical examples, so I’ve gathered some of my favorites.
This is a beefy one, so I’ve created jumps to each one:
Share your experiences where others can learn
I know I’ve said this a lot, but it bears repeating! If there’s nothing else you take away from what I have to say, I hope you will consider getting a personal website (even a very basic one) and writing a bit about your journey. Even just having more visibility into the diversity of paths people can take is really powerful for helping bring others along. Personal websites and blogs are also fantastic places to highlight resources you appreciate and channels for directing people toward opportunities they might not otherwise find out about.
Fun fact: in several of my jobs, I’ve been involved in managing parts of my organization's website including the web analytics. Do you know what’s often the MOST high-traffic part of the site? The bio pages! People are constantly looking each other up online, and by having a personal website you get to shape other people’s first impression of you.
Other fun ideas of things to post on your site or blog about:
- Your answers to applications: If you had the opportunity to go to school, participate in a fellowship program, or even get a job relevant to AI policy, you can probably just post your answers to application forms you’ve submitted. (Here are two of mine from TechCongress and Assembly!) Of course, make sure you didn’t agree to NOT do that, but honestly in my experience that’s pretty rare.
- Your advice to others: Take a moment to reflect. What’s something that you’ve done (or not done) that helped you get to where you are? Now share that so that others can stand on your giant shoulders.
- Works-in-progress and ideas you’re exploring: Not everything you share has to be polished and fully-formed. You can also bring others along by “learning out loud” and sharing ideas and problems you’re still chewing on. Consider sharing a list of questions you still have (which could also be a fun way to meet experts who can help you get the answers)!
- Talk openly about things you’ve tried that HAVEN’T worked: Similarly, sometimes you try… and you fail. But it’s great that you tried! While we’re often encouraged to share the most unblemished versions of ourselves, being candid about mistakes can also help people recognize that you don’t have to be perfect to be a person making a difference.
Make time to chat
The #1 ask I get from folks interested in getting into AI policy is to schedule a call. It can honestly be pretty overwhelming, and a lot of people in the space simply declare bankruptcy on the whole thing and stop taking intro calls altogether.
Trust me: I get it.
When you’re a visible person in a desirable field, people often can’t even imagine how many requests you get for a “quick chat” or a “short call” from folks who don’t realize they’re not the only one with that brilliant idea. Realistically, there’s only so much time in a day, week, or year, and you can’t spend ALL of your time on intro calls.
But I don’t think that means you can’t do them at all. Intro calls are a great way to expand your own perspectives, stay grounded in what challenges people entering the field are facing, and, of course, meet new friends and allies. (We’re all on the same team, after all!) The trick is figuring out the cadence and the format that works for you.
Here are some ways I manage things:
- Offer to answer questions in writing: This puts the ball in their court to be clear about why they’re reaching out to me in the first place and means that I can answer things asynchronously on my own time.
- Use a scheduling link: I use Calendly to cut down on the overhead of coordinating timing and also to help enforce my boundaries so that I don’t over-commit myself.
- Redirect people toward publicly available resources: Sometimes, I just don’t have the bandwidth to have a meeting or to craft individualized responses to folks. In that case, it’s handy to have a place to point people to. (see previous section 😜)
Nominate people for awards, invitations, and talks
The last two sections were focused on things you can do that help people you don’t know (yet!), but what about the folks you do?
Something I’ve found supreme delight in is secretly nominating people for awards in this field. As you continue your work in AI policy, you’ll no doubt encounter many brilliant people working hard to make the world a better place. Often this work is not visible, if you’re not paying attention, but you can change that.
Awards may be big national recognition opportunities or something within the context of your neighborhood or workplace. Often, there are public submission forms to nominate people. Although they sometimes take a little work, it’s really satisfying to see the nominations get announced and really, really satisfying when someone you nominated actually wins!
In addition to awards, other ways you can shine a light on others’ greatness is by suggesting their name as a potential invitee to exclusive events. Whether you can go yourself or (especially) if not, this has the double benefit of helping the event organizers by putting good folks on their radar and helping the people you recommend by calling attention to their great work. You might even consider nominating someone to be a speaker or panelist. (Do check in with the person first, though, as I’ve learned the hard way that not everyone likes to be asked to do public speaking! 😅)
Engage with groups who aren’t “strategic”
While you should definitely nominate others to prestigious awards and suggest them for shiny events, I encourage you to also consider participating in events and activities that aren’t necessary noteworthy. It’s fantastic to be asked to keynote an important conference, but it can also be life changing to be a guest speaker for your high school or a local community group.
Similar to making time to chat, above, this can quickly become overwhelming if you’re not careful, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. I recommend trying for diversity with the types of people and groups you meet with. You’ll learn so much from these conversations, and they’ll give you an opportunity to connect with people on a different level than the high-profile, high-polish engagements. Figuring out a cadence (once per quarter? per year?) that works for you is important for managing your commitments. Bonus upside: speaking with groups of people like this can be one way to bundle a bunch of intro chats into one conversation.
Discuss your salary and negotiation info
Finally, one last way you can help bring others along is to break the taboo around discussing salary and pay.
As noted in part 1 on Mindset, working professionally in AI policy requires selling your labor. It helps, when you’re negotiating how you should be compensated to have information about what others in the space are being offered and paid. Unfortunately, not everyone has personal connections to give them the inside scoop on this information, especially if they’re just starting out in a new field. This can have cumulative effects over the course of people’s careers and tends to disproportionately disadvantage people who already face other barriers in work.
You're an all-star (get paid!)
One way you can counteract this is to bear the slight discomfort of a mildly awkward conversation and offer to share your info with others. It helps to lead with vulnerability and make it clear that people don’t need to reciprocate.
Here’s a template from my world with underlines for places to fill in the blanks:
It may not make sense for you to share your info publicly (although hopefully your organization publishes salary ranges on job descriptions so it’s not a total mystery!) but it definitely can be really powerful to share in 1:1 conversations.
Huge S/O to Hannah Williams and the team at Salary Transparent Street for their leadership in the public conversation about compensation and pay equity. They’re doing essential work!
You made it!
When I started writing this series, I honestly thought everything I had to say would fit in a single post, but here we are. 😅 Thanks for coming on this wild ride. I continue to be grateful to those who have come before me, who take the time to speak my name in rooms of power, to celebrate my work, and give me guidance. Here’s to more learning in the years to come!
Jan 7, 2024
I’m frequently asked for advice on how to break into the industry I’m in or how to achieve a position I’ve held. I’ve been privileged to serve in many interesting and varied roles across sectors, from small nonprofits and garage startups to huge multinationals and even the US Federal Government. While I personally owe a lot of my journey to privilege, luck, and the good graces of others, I know that “be lucky” isn’t particularly useful advice. In the spirit of providing something actionable, I’ve gathered here some reflections on things that I think have served me in my journey. I hope these reflections will be helpful for others on their journeys as well, and I encourage those with experience in this space to share more about their journeys, lessons learned, and advice too!
Note: For the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about “getting into AI policy” and offering some specific examples, but most of these suggestions should hold regardless of what it is specifically you want to do. For more on entering the tech policy field, see my Emerging Technology Policy Careers profile.
This series comes in five parts:
- Be perceived
Prefer to read everything as one long piece instead? i gotchu. 💖
Be perceived
All right, so you (still) want to get into AI policy! The first question you should ask yourself when trying to move into a new domain is “how would anyone know that this is something I am trying to do?”
For the purposes of this section, I’ll mostly be talking in terms of getting a paying job in AI policy, but a lot of this will apply even if you aren’t looking for paid employment.
Even though the AI policy market is competitive, there are still many opportunities. Many of those opportunities may not be accessible, however, through public channels (like on job boards). Many jobs are never listed publicly or are published only as a formality once a candidate has already been selected. The world is not a meritocracy, and often “who you know” does make quite a bit of difference, even if people might pretend otherwise.
Don’t despair! Meritocracy actually sucks in a lot of ways, and you can navigate this reality. You can become legible to your prospective collaborators, employers, and funders. You just need to help them to help you. You need to be perceived.
Whether you are already deep in this field or just getting started, you can make it easier for other people to find out how interested and passionate you are about AI policy. I am not talking about just adding the words “AI Policy Enthusiast” to your LinkedIn headline. Like the classic writing advice instructs: show, don’t tell. There are lots of people that say they want to work on these topics, but what are you doing (or what have you done) that demonstrates to people that you care about AI policy?
Here are some examples of things I have done that helped demonstrate my interest and expertise in this space:
- Created an “AI study group” to audit free online machine learning courses with a group of coworkers
- Followed the hashtags of conferences on social media and engaged in conversations about the presentations (even if I wasn’t physically present!)
- Participated in and helped host meetups and events focused on tech and social impact
- Shared articles about tech policy that I thought were interesting or informative
- Joined a machine learning research paper discussion group
- Publicly asked questions and shared reflections about topics I was learning about
The things you do don’t need to be particularly grand or consequential. They don’t need to be fancy or “official” or especially advanced. Sure, it’s great if you can run a public campaign or draft a new AI policy strategy from scratch, but you can also show your commitment and interest just by starting a three-person reading group with some friends. You can commit to summarizing one article per week on LinkedIn. You can maintain a running list of your favorite lectures on AI on a personal website. There are many ways to demonstrate your interest, growth, and commitment. You just need to give other people the chance to learn about it.
You do not have to wait until you are an “AI policy expert” to do this, either! Rather, it is incredibly useful to “learn out loud” by sharing your questions and journey as you learn. The first item on my list (created an “AI study group”) was something that I did knowing full-well that most, if not all, of the people who joined the study group would know more about the topic than I did. I scheduled the meetings, reserved the room, and handled the logistics, but often I was the one asking the most—and often the most basic—questions during our meetings.
Despite this, not only was I learning, but the other people were learning, too. So they kept showing up. Through my “learning out loud,” my coworkers got answers to questions they might never have asked and got to practice explaining topics that they thought they understood. All the while, whether I knew it or not, I was establishing myself, even if just within my company, as someone who cares deeply about these topics.
I was PERCEIVED even to the extent that people started sending me unsolicited links to articles or invites to events based on my clear interest. If people in your friend group or at work are sending interesting AI policy stuff to you, that’s a good sign that you have effectively indicated that this is a thing you care about.
Step one: Mindset
Step two: Be percieved ✅