William MacAskill Keynote Speaker

Founder of the effective altruism movement
New York Times bestselling author of What We Owe the Future (2022) and Doing Good Better (2015)
Associate Professor in Philosophy at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute

Enquire Add to shortlist

William MacAskill's Biography

William MacAskill is a philosophy professor at Oxford and founder of the effective altruism movement.

At the time of his appointment, MacAskill was the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world. His academic research focuses on the fundamentals of effective altruism – where evidence and reason are used to figure out how to help others as much as possible, with one’s time and money.

William founded the effective altruism movement back in the late 2000s and supporters included tech billionaires like Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk and Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook.

Author of Doing Good Better (2015), a book that introduced this principle to the world. He penned, New York Times bestseller, What We Owe the Future, a continuation in 2022. In his latest book, William Macaskill takes the case further with “longtermism”. A view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.

Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian and author of Utopia is one among many who sang high praises of Macaskill and What We Owe the Future. Bregman says he has “never read something so deep and fundamental” and regards William as “one of the most important philosophers alive today.”

William MacAskill’s pivoting work has been published in Ethics, Mind, and The Journal of Philosophy, as well as The Guardian, Time, and The New Yorker.

Named Forbes 30 under 30 social entrepreneur in 2017, MacAskill is the co-founder of three non-profit organisations based on effective altruist principles. 80,000 Hours conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that. The Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA), where William is President, supports the effective altruism community through funding, data-backed analyses, global conferences and forums. Giving What We Can, best known for The Giving What We Can Pledge, encourages members to give 10% of their income to effective charities. The foundation is said to have raised over $2 billion thus far.

William was educated at Cambridge, Princeton, and Oxford. He earned his PhD in Philosophy, at St. Anne’s College, Oxford in 2014.