How to Want Better Things
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
A Life at Work
22 years old
Graduate
Collects a diploma and a faint sense of obligation to make it mean something.
25 years old
First Serious Job
Learns that “making a difference” and “making partner” sound similar if you say them fast enough.
Age 33
Promotion
Attends mindfulness training sponsored by the company causing the stress.
Age 45
Midlife Pivot
Hires a coach to rediscover intrinsic motivation.
Age 65
Retirement
Finally achieves work-life balance by removing the first half.
A Life at Work
22 years old
Graduate
Collects a diploma and a faint sense of obligation to make it mean something.
25 years old
First Serious Job
Learns that “making a difference” and “making partner” sound similar if you say them fast enough.
Age 33
Promotion
Attends mindfulness training sponsored by the company causing the stress.
Age 45
Midlife Pivot
Hires a coach to rediscover intrinsic motivation.
Age 65
Retirement
Finally achieves work-life balance by removing the first half.
About the Book
About the Book
How to Want Better Things explores why so many people spend years building careers that look impressive but feel hollow, and offers a different approach to thinking about ambition.
Drawing on behavioral economics, moral philosophy, and psychology, the book examines a question most career advice avoids: what if you're working hard toward goals you never actually chose? We absorb what success looks like from the people around us, chase whatever feels prestigious or safe, and wake up years later wondering why none of it feels like enough.
This book argues that desire isn't fixed. You can learn to want things that actually matter. Not through vague inspiration about purpose, but through concrete frameworks for evaluating which problems need solving and where your skills could make a real difference. The kind of work that might justify getting to choose what to do with your life in the first place.
Whether you're early in your career and trying to avoid spending a decade on the wrong path, or you've already built something impressive and are wondering if any of it matters, this book provides practical tools for redirecting ambition toward work that won't feel hollow in twenty years.
Because it turns out you can train yourself to want better things. The question is whether you will.
Endorsements & Early Praise
Endorsements & Early Praise
Reflections from readers and academics who’ve engaged with How to Want Better Things.
Reflections from readers and academics who’ve engaged with How to Want Better Things.
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
"I'm excited that this student team has discovered that many of our brightest students are succeeding at something that will neither satisfy them, nor make the world a better place. Now they want students everywhere to think about what they really want to get out of their lives. I'm excited to see what impact their project has. The potential is enormous."
Peter Singer
Professor of Bioethics
Princeton University
"One would hope college students make well-informed choices. Yet substantial evidence shows that students often operate with imperfect information and are influenced heavily by social pressures and local norms. How to Want Better Things addresses this gap directly. It is a book on how to make more informed educational and professional choices, particularly for those interested in evidence-based approaches to doing good"
Professor German Reyes
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I would recommend this book to students who bring curiosity toward their career trajectory and how to spend their lives meaningfully. Indeed, I am already recommending sections of this manuscript to some of my students. The work is a welcome addition to the literature on purposeful living and ethical decision-making, taking particular aim at college students at elite universities."
Prof. Kevin Kuruc
Department of Economics
Middlebury College
"I am writing to express my support for How to Want Better Things, a student-authored book which addresses a pressing problem of our time: the disproportionate funneling of talented, highly trained, and intelligent students from our elite universities to extractive capitalist firms, rather than to careers in public service and social impact. In my personal experiences at Harvard and Duke University, I have seen how many of our most promising students who begin their university careers with ambitious goals to change the world ultimately choose careers in corporate consulting and finance post-graduation. While this problem in part stems from the astronomical debts many students take on to attend college, it is also largely due to students’ lack of knowledge of other options available to them; while consulting and investment banking firms aggressively recruit at elite universities, other career options rarely do. The problem also stems from a competitive culture which makes students feel they must choose the option that will maximize their starting salary, rather than that which will make them feel most fulfilled. I believe this project will serve as a meaningful resource for students and will contribute to motivating young talent to use their powers for our collective benefit."
Jessica Van Meir PhD Candidate in Public Policy
Ashford Scholar
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
“Every thoughtful young person wonders, ‘What should I do with my life?’ *How to Want Better Things* provides thoughtful, contrarian advice to help readers find excitement and meaning in a world where most of us settle for mediocrity.”
Prof. Bryan Caplan
Department of Economics
George Mason University
"The United States is a nation and a society with an embarrassment of riches. Almost all of these resources are misdirected, resulting in increased inequality, increased despoiling of the environment, increased aggressiveness, and increased irresponsibility. The resource that is most wasted and misdirected is the talent and energy of our young people. Our most prestigious universities funnel our best and our brightest into careers that make existing problems worse. It is time, I think, for our educational institutions to focus, as they once did, on the kind of moral education that will encourage students to devote their talents and energies in directions that make the world better--even if only a little bit. I hope that How to Want Better Things will help contribute to this mission."
Barry Schwartz
Author of The Costs of Living, Why We Work, and Choose Wisely, among other books.
"Setting the best minds to work on the most important problems is an imperative for humanity. But I've been a professor at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT for 45 years, and I have seen the best minds of many generations wasted on careers of dubious consulting, finance, and tech (together with some misdirected activism). How To Want Better Things aims to close this gap, an inspiring and vital endeavor."
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, and Rationality
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
Camiel Schröeder
Camiel Schroeder studies Computer Science and Environmental Policy at Middlebury College as a Davis Scholar and UWC alumnus, and founded Middlebury's impact-focused community. His work examines talent misallocation among capable young people and how campus organizing can redirect careers toward high-impact problems.
Growing up between The Netherlands and Morocco revealed that global welfare distribution corresponds to geographic lottery rather than merit. That recognition became the evaluative constraint on subsequent decisions.
What proved more troubling was observing capable peers systematically funnel toward prestigious careers absorbed through social proof rather than conscious choice. Over three years working with philanthropic organizations and building student movements, he established infrastructure to redirect ambitious students toward meaningful work.
His current work examines universities as leverage points for talent allocation, how communication systems shift collective behavior, and why the decisive moment in most lives occurs earlier than recognized. He has worked with student organizers across institutions to make high-impact career paths accessible to those who hadn't considered them viable.
Lincoln Duckson
Lincoln co-leads student organizing at Harvard and founded the Harvard-MIT Impact Research Initiative, an 8-week program that helps students launch research careers on problems that matter.
Raised in Prior Lake, Minnesota, he noticed a pattern at elite universities: thousands of capable students flowing toward consulting and finance not because they wanted those careers, but because everyone else was doing it. Talent allocation followed prestige, not importance. By the time people realized the path didn't match their values, the sunk costs made switching feel impossible.
He founded IRI to test whether intervening early changes outcomes. The program places students in small mentored teams tackling research questions in AI governance, technical AI safety, biosecurity, global health, or animal welfare. Over eight weeks, participants develop technical skills on actual problems rather than hypotheticals, with a prize for the strongest project. The model treats meaningful work as something you learn through structure and mentorship, not inspiration alone.
Sam Loescher
Contracting dengue fever in Nepal precipitated the hardest, and most transformative, three weeks of Sam’s life. His recovery was assured by luck of birth, whereas millions lacking this good fortune suffer and die each year from the same preventable diseases. Billions of non-human animals face still greater cruelty and apathy throughout their lives. The scale of suffering that Sam intuited during his convalescence continues to motivate commitment to social impact to this day. As an Economics and Global Health student, Sam investigates how societies manage vulnerability and how institutions translate compassion into measurable outcomes. As a campus organizer, he works to shift food policy toward plant-based systems and to reduce animal suffering through evidence-based advocacy.
Zach Chen
Zach Chen studies Computer Science at Harvard and builds projects at the intersection of technology and coordination problems.
Raised in Boston, he spent years in startup and blockchain culture, building products and optimizing metrics. The pattern that emerged troubled him: smart people creating systems that didn't actually solve the problems they claimed to address.
Through the Arete Fellowship and Harvard's impact-focused community, he started examining why. Why do capable people funnel toward prestigious projects rather than important ones? His current work tests whether this is fixable. He co-founded Foundry to shift Harvard's builder culture toward meaningful projects. He works as a VC scout looking for early-stage talent solving real problems. He's trying to figure out if intervening early in someone's trajectory actually compounds, or if the defaults are too strong.
Tyler Stark
Tyler Stark studies Architecture and Philosophy at Middlebury College, currently at Oxford. His work examines how built environments encode values and constrain what kinds of lives are possible.
For Tyler, the moral world began with a question too simple to escape. If you would save a drowning child in front of you, why not one across the ocean? Reading Peter Singer’s thought experiment in a philosophy seminar felt like a fracture opening inside an ordinary day. From that moment, the comfortable boundary between ethics and personal aspirations collapsed. Now at Oxford University, Tyler explores how physical space encodes moral distance. His research in housing policy and environmental design treats architecture as a moral technology: one that can make justice tangible or render it abstract.
For Journalists and Media
For Journalists and Media
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
"Bridges philosophy, behavioral science, and social impact"
Explores how to align ambition with measurable good
Built around a central question: “What if wanting better things could be learned?”
Available in print, digital, and audio formats
First chapter available now wherever you listen to podcasts
Contact us: press@howtowantbetterthings.org
Join us for an Upcoming Speaking Event
Join us for an Upcoming Speaking Event
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
How to Want Better Things is a book about how to make choices that actually matter.
Written by students from Oxford, Harvard, and Middlebury, it explores how people can find purpose in their work and use their talents to do more good in the world.
How to Want Better Things
How to Want Better Things
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.
Your Life, Your Choices, and the Stakes of This Century.