Jan-WIllem van Putten | How to build a career that actually changes the world

[00:00:00] Jan-Willem: When you walk around on your campus, campus recruiters will tell you: if you join McKinsey or BCG or another firm, we will give you excellent training. You will work with the best. The projects are interesting, and it's this pathway — default pathway almost — for people to get into.

I think impact-focused work should create similar pathways that are clear, that offer you training, capital, prestige. And that's definitely possible.

[00:00:31] Beatrice: Today I'm joined by Jan-Willem van Putten. I should have asked how to pronounce your name before I started the recording. How do I—

[00:00:37] Jan-Willem: Pronounce it? I think that's perfect.

[00:00:38] Beatrice: It's good. Okay, good.

[00:00:42] Beatrice: You're the co-founder and executive director of the School for Moral Ambition, which is a relatively new project that I'm really excited to be talking to you about.

You started it with Rutger, who I think maybe people recognize as the author of — I read his Utopia for Realists a long time ago. But I know he also wrote Humankind and Moral Ambition, which are very much in line with the work that we're trying to do here at the Existential Hope Project.

So welcome, Jan-Willem.

[00:01:12] Jan-Willem: Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me.

[00:01:14] Beatrice: So I think let's dive straight in. Basically, I know that you wrote your university thesis about talent waste, right? The sort of the smartest graduates going into banking rather than working on solving our most real, important problems.

And then, as I understand it, you went into consulting yourself. Tell us, what happened there and what your journey was.

[00:01:43] Jan-Willem: Yeah, so I joined the dark side, as we used to call it within the School for Moral Ambition. Yeah. So I wrote this thesis, and indeed it was about a large chunk of technical graduates who joined investment banking firms.

I thought that was a double-edged sword, because they couldn't create, let's say, valuable innovation for society. And on the other hand, they worked in jobs that were not actually creating a lot of value. So that was more or less the thesis. And after that I decided I needed to become a management consultant.

The story there is that I briefly worked for a nonprofit in between, and I did an internship there, which was absolutely lovely. But what I felt was: I want to learn as much as possible in the first years of my career. And then I thought, where can I work with good people? What's a credible pathway into an industry where you learn, where you work with the best people?

And then I thought: management consulting, that makes sense. So it was a little bit calculated, in a way. I knew I wanted to get out at some point, and I did it after three years eventually.

[00:02:55] Beatrice: And was your thesis right? Did you learn a lot going in there?

[00:02:59] Jan-Willem: Yes, I think so. And I still like to work with former management consultants. What you learn is to really structure hard problems, to be data-driven, factual. I think that's really important. And to work really hard — that's the other thing. It's like a muscle that you can train. So I think former management consultants don't have issues about working 60 hours if needed. And I still feel that I have this muscle that's trained. Yeah.

[00:03:31] Beatrice: And then when you decided to make a change, was it that you felt, okay, I've picked up most of the tools that I need — or was there a specific opportunity that presented itself? What made you step away from management consulting?

[00:03:46] Jan-Willem: Yeah, so there's actually a funny story here. After nine months I got my permanent contract — an offer from the firm — and they said, "We really enjoy working with you. We see a future for you." And then I told the partner I was speaking to: "Hey, I actually think that our work lacks impact." And then the partner responded: "Huh, but we have a lot of impact here. The bottom line of our clients — they're super happy with us." I said, "I actually miss a societal impact."

Then he offered me — which was amazing, honestly, I'm super grateful — what we call an 80% contract, which enabled me to take a sabbatical every year to work on important projects. So that was the first step. After year one, I worked in Botswana for an NGO, doing monitoring and evaluation to check the effectiveness of the charity.

And the second time, I joined my friends and we had, I think, a very not-so-tractable idea of changing Dutch education and really improving it, which is really hard because it was a pretty conservative world. And that got me thinking: is there actually something else we can do for education?

And eventually that led to me and my friend creating a startup — a for-profit — to help educational institutions do more with their data. Creating dashboards and doing more or less the work that we did as management consultants, but in a sector that we believed in, that was important. Dutch education. So that was after my second stint, my second sabbatical — I decided to leave and start a company. So that's more or less it. It's a gradual evolution, I would say.

[00:05:37] Beatrice: So I guess the reason a lot of people would choose to go into management consulting, for example, is like security, or a high-status, well-paid job. Seems great — that's what most people want, probably. So what do you think: were you always driven to focus more on impact? Or can we make this something that we involve more people in, to have this perspective, rather than just the personal status?

[00:06:13] Jan-Willem: Yeah. I think for a lot of people, it's indeed about the status and security. For me, that has never been the case. Like I said, for me it was mainly about the learning opportunity, and indeed getting some career capital in.

So yeah, there is a group of people — they're really hard to attract for us as well — who are just happy with their life, happy with working in management consulting, and that's what they want.

I also believe that people's motivations are not black and white. There are a lot of people who maybe like a bit of the status, but also want to have impact. And they have two voices constantly fighting in their minds. That was, I think, true for me — although I think my impact voice was relatively strong, and that I wanted to do other stuff.

But I think there is a group, indeed, where if you offer them a clear pathway into a career of impact, you can convince them. And that's often, I think, the issue. This is such a clear path. When you walk around on your campus, campus recruiters will tell you: if you join McKinsey or BCG or another firm, we will give you excellent training. You will work with the best. The projects are interesting, and it's this default pathway almost for people to get into.

I think impact-focused work should create similar pathways that are clear, that offer you training, capital, prestige. And that's definitely possible.

[00:07:42] Beatrice: Yeah. And this is what we're going to talk about today, largely. Because you're right — if you're a person who just has this vague feeling that you want to make a difference, you may not know that there are actual pathways these days. And that's really exciting, and you have created one of them. So tell us a bit more about the School for Moral Ambition. What is it that you do?

[00:08:12] Jan-Willem: Yeah, so the School for Moral Ambition brings together what we call committed citizens who want to drive societal change.

We do that in two different ways. One is we organize fellowships on campuses in the US as well as for mid-career professionals to shift careers. These fellowships offer a very clear pathway, especially the mid-career fellowships. You quit your job, you take a training course which lasts for a month — we'll educate you on the problem you're working on and how to make change in the most effective way. And then you'll do the work for six months. We'll send you out in the field, let you do the work. And the theory of change is that people stick to that cause after the program. And honestly, most people do, so they keep working on it.

Then of course there are the university fellowships, like I mentioned. They target a slightly younger audience — they still go back to university afterwards, but the goal of course is also to pivot their plans and get them hooked, to feel like: oh, this is actually a career of fun. I have my community of fellows who also join important causes.

So that's the fellowship side. Then there is the community side, which is about creating a global community. We currently have 25,000 people on our platform. They convene in all kinds of ways, one of them through our Moral Ambition Circle program, which is a self-facilitated program. There's a very clear structure, and the goal of the program is to actually think about your best next step in your career. It's mostly aimed at professionals as well, but students can do it too — to start thinking about what are the problems I want to work on, what is my role, what is my theory of change, what do I actually want to change, and from what roles can I influence that?

So those are more or less the two paths. It's maybe interesting — when we started out, we thought: okay, we have the fellowships, we have the community. And then we figured out that we can also help a lot of others, because there is an ecosystem of organizations that offer clear pathways, and maybe we can help them as some kind of launchpad or accelerator.

So we also have what we call the launchpad — the third pillar of the School for Moral Ambition — where we help start and accelerate initiatives. Not owned by the School for Moral Ambition, but we just use the platform we're having. Rutger, my co-founder, has a pretty big following, and our platform has 25,000 people, so we use that to help other organizations in the space.

[00:11:00] Beatrice: And you mentioned that the management consultant trajectory has a whole field built up for it — it's a clear path. And are you saying that now there is actually more of a field for impact work as well?

[00:11:18] Jan-Willem: Yes, there are. There are a lot of organizations working on global pressing issues that create clear pathways for people. Think about an organization like Animal Advocacy Careers — they do this for the topic of animal welfare. Think about an organization like Tarbell — they do it for AI and journalism. Talos, that was an organization I founded in Brussels to work on artificial intelligence policy. And these are just some examples. You have Horizon in the US — I think they offer a clear pathway into technology policy.

So yeah, there are plenty of programs like this, but people just don't know about them. So part of our theory of change is actually helping these organizations use the platform we're having to get more people in.

[00:12:00] Beatrice: Yeah. And you mentioned a few of the topics that these organizations focus on. But what are the cross-cutting areas that you guys focus on in your fellowships and programs?

[00:12:15] Jan-Willem: Yeah, so when we started out, we started in Europe — in Amsterdam and Brussels. And we did research on: okay, if we think about the big lever here, the big lever is Brussels policy. Creating policy here in Brussels for 450 million people. The lives of animals are affected by Brussels policy.

So we did the research. If we look at the different causes, what can people work on here in Brussels? Because — maybe a little side step here — as a management consultant, a lot of the career capital and skills that you're acquiring in the first years are quite transferable. You can deploy them here in Brussels.

So we thought: if we recruit these very smart people with specific skills, what can they do? And we started with two topics. Topic one was the food transition — the goal there is to get the animal out of our food system as much as possible, and to have a protein transition towards more plant-based, or maybe even cultivated meat at some point, or fermentation products. That was the first cause we came up with. And we use Brussels policy as a lever. So we train these fellows in policy skills — what is actually the policy landscape here, what are the arguments you need to advance in these policy debates?

And the second topic was a big surprise, honestly — one that I didn't see coming at all. It was the topic of tobacco control. There are still a lot of smokers in Europe. The average smoking rate in Europe is about 25%, which is higher than the US, especially some states which have very low smoking rates these days.

And what we figured out was that this is still the largest cause of preventable disease in Europe — and even globally. But we focused on Europe in this case. And we also found that it's just a handful of people working on this. Often people who did extremely hard work — they laid the foundation for strong tobacco regulation in the nineties and the 2000s — but then not a lot of new people came in. People who were, let's say, up to date with the latest technologies you can use for advocacy. These days I think advocates have an army through artificial intelligence that they can use. And we want to create an inflow of fresh new talent that could be the second wave, or maybe even the third wave, of anti-tobacco activists.

And I was so surprised: one, by the scale of this problem, how big it still is. And two, by the neglectedness — which is another very important factor for us when we consider different causes. I remember the first time I showed up in Brussels at one of these offices and I saw this super passionate Romanian guy in his fifties, in an office with a hole in the roof and one intern. And I was so shocked: are you just leading this battle alone? I had so much respect for him, but at the same time I was so surprised.

[00:15:33] Beatrice: Yeah. I didn't know — I knew about it being a problem in China, people smoking more — but I did not know it was still such a big problem in Europe. That's really interesting.

[00:15:45] Jan-Willem: Yeah, especially in Eastern European and Southern European countries.

[00:15:49] Beatrice: Oh, yeah.

[00:15:52] Jan-Willem: But then again, you're creating policy. We have a Tobacco Products Directive and a Tobacco Tax Directive, and they are created in Brussels. So you're creating the policy for 450 million people — for, let's say, a hundred million smokers. That's such a big lever, and we want to get more people into Brussels to work on that.

[00:16:12] Beatrice: And you mentioned a bit how you evaluate, but can you walk us through it? How do you decide what to prioritize in terms of these cause areas?

[00:16:24] Jan-Willem: Yeah, so we use the Triple-S framework. The first S — I think I mentioned it — is scale: the size of a topic. With tobacco, as an example, it's the largest cause of preventable disease in Europe. It's the largest cause of what we call quality-adjusted life years lost — a term that might be familiar to this audience. So that's roughly where we start: is it a big problem?

The second S is solvability. Do we see a path to change? Again, taking the tobacco example: tobacco regulation comes out of Brussels, there's just a handful of people working on this, but it is tractable — you can influence these policies.

And then the third one is neglectedness. We call it "sorely neglected" — a bit of a stretch for the third S — but do we see a lot of talented people working on this? With tobacco, like I said, it's a handful of people who actually lobby for what we would see as the good side here in Brussels.

So that's the simple process that we use to come up with these first two topics.

We're currently expanding the topics. The third topic will be the topic of tax fairness. It's interesting because I think it's more—

[00:17:44] Beatrice: Popular—

[00:17:45] Jan-Willem: Yeah.

[00:17:46] Beatrice: Sorry, tax fairness — what is that?

[00:17:48] Jan-Willem: Tax. Sorry. Tax fairness.

[00:17:50] Beatrice: Tax fairness. What is that?

[00:17:52] Jan-Willem: Yeah. Actually, if we look at the world, wealth is very much concentrated at the moment — wealth, and also power because of that. And I think that's what we're seeing in this world, and it's a development I think will get worse over time, especially with recent developments in artificial intelligence. You can imagine that a lot of wealth will be concentrated more and more. I think that's dangerous because of the power concentration that actually follows from that. And we can see that all happening right now and playing out in the US at the moment.

So we thought: okay, what can we actually add here? This is maybe less neglected, if I'm really honest — a lot of people say this, they want to work on this. But we definitely see that some parts are missing.

One thing is creating the policies that actually work. It's a super complicated topic — to tax wealth on a global scale, there are so many loopholes you can use. So that was one thing we thought: okay, can we convince the most talented tax experts who maybe worked on the dark side before, to come up with proposals to close these loopholes?

The second aspect, which I think is also still a bit neglected, is that most people actually believe that ultra-high-net-worth individuals should be taxed — and taxed more than they are now. They're taxed less than, let's say, you and me. And even less, if you look at the percentages, than very poor people.

So we felt: can we mobilize, can we create a global tax fairness movement? And that's also where I think the community we're creating — I told you about the 25,000 people on our platform — can act as some kind of lever for change. Can we engage these folks to help us organize a global tax fairness movement?

This is something we're kicking off at the end of this month, end of March. We're opening up applications for this fellowship and the other two fellowships again — they're in their third iteration now. And can we recruit people to work on this global issue of tax fairness?

[00:20:13] Beatrice: Interesting. Yeah. Is there any other cause area that you've identified that's coming next?

[00:20:21] Jan-Willem: Yes. The fourth cause we're currently looking at is the topic of democracy. Again, I think a bit less neglected than working on tobacco or even the food transition.

But the angle here is that there are so many interventions you could look at. It's such a wide space, so many different levers. Think about media, think about misinformation, think about the voting system — the electoral system we have in many countries, which is very often outdated. Finding out what the best interventions are and scaling them is something that's pretty neglected. This is a very new field.

So we collaborate with an organization called Power for Democracies. They're currently doing research into the best organizations and the best interventions, and together with us, they will do some follow-up research to see: okay, where can we actually place fellows? Because when we recruit fellows, we really want to think this through — where can we influence this in the best way, what are the best interventions? So that's what we're currently figuring out, and this will be the next topic. The topic for next year, starting in Europe first, but it's also a topic that of course needs attention on a global scale.

So again, we decided to move away from just doing a fellowship. We're also thinking: can we leverage the community again, because this is a topic that touches everyone on a global scale? Can we leverage the 25,000 people in our community to help save democracies around the globe?

[00:22:02] Beatrice: Yeah. And if someone joins your fellowship, what does that journey look like actually?

[00:22:11] Jan-Willem: Yeah. So it's a long application process — and a hard one. The admittance rate is relatively low, around 2%.

[00:22:19] Beatrice: Wow.

[00:22:20] Jan-Willem: So it's pretty competitive, but I would still always encourage people to try. When in doubt, yeah.

It's a four or five round process. It starts with a form that you complete — takes about an hour, and we make a first cut. And then there's a trial task that people need to complete to see: okay, do they actually have the transferable skills that we're looking for? Are they self-starters? And we're also testing on our founding principles — do we feel that people fit at the School for Moral Ambition? Then there's an interview with one of the program managers, as every cause has a program manager. And finally there's an interview with your placement organization.

Like I said, our philosophy is we don't want to start our own think tank or anything. We want to strengthen the existing ecosystem, and that's super important for us. So we'll introduce you to an organization that already works on this issue. And if they say thumbs up, you're on the program.

Then, as I said, the first thing we do when we start a program is a month of training. And it's not only about learning about the cause — the policy environment, for example — it's also about creating very strong cohorts. This is what I really believe: working on these issues is not easy, and you need to create a sense of belonging. You need to create very strong groups that really feel like: hey, we will solve this together, and this might be a fight over a decade, or decades, or a whole career. So it's really important that they feel they are part of a group.

[00:24:08] Beatrice: I know that's something you've talked about — needing ambitious idealists. People who have the drive of a startup founder but more the values of an activist. Is that something that's hard to find? Is it hard to find the idealism, or the ambition? Are there a lot of people who are able to combine these?

[00:24:33] Jan-Willem: No, I would say it's pretty rare. And maybe "ambition" here is interesting — it's not only about the willingness to work hard. I think there are a lot of idealists who work extremely hard, but it's also the willingness and the skills to be effective in what you do.

And especially — I think this is so interesting — if you think about activism in 2026, a lot can be automated. A lot of NGOs in the past wrote reports, which was all manual labor. They were doing research, which took a very long time. Then they would publish a report, then they would invite policymakers to read the report, they would organize an event. And this is rapidly changing at the moment. I think that's also very interesting.

But it also means the profile is changing in a way. If you think it through, there are actually two profiles, maybe. One is the profile of someone who can do the work in the back — automate a lot, do research together with an AI tool. And then there's the second profile, which is way more about being good with people, being able to build coalitions. And I think that's also a very important part of being effective.

I think Rutger wrote a lot in his book about "noble losers" — and I think often why social movements or activists are ineffective is the lack of coalition building. Because if you want to cause societal change, it's of course very easy to speak to the people who already agree. But how do you get the people on board who maybe agree with part of it, or who need to hear different arguments? Not just: "oh yeah, this is good for animals," or "yeah, smoking kills" — these kind of straightforward answers might work for people who share the same values, but they're not the most effective ones to convince a larger group.

[00:26:45] Beatrice: Yeah. As I understood it, the "noble loser" thing is like these movements that care more about being right than actually winning.

[00:26:53] Jan-Willem: Yeah. Correct.

[00:26:55] Beatrice: Do you see that playing out anywhere today?

[00:27:00] Jan-Willem: I think if you look at the past — honestly, at the animal movement — and I think this is the problem that's maybe dearest to me. I think this is the largest moral atrocity of our time. You see what's happening: billions of animals being killed in the most horrible conditions. And yes, there has been some progress, but also, if you look at the size of the issue, how severe it is, I think there hasn't been enough progress. And I think that's mainly because a lot of animal organizers — although they work really hard, and I think they are ambitious and idealistic — the question is: are they effective in the end?

And I think this is just one example. I know a lot of great people working in the space and I don't want to offend them, but I think historically the track record of this movement has been, let's say, mixed. And this is also something that we actively try to work on: if we want to win, what are the arguments that fly with people who maybe don't care about animals?

That's what's called moral reframing, and it's also mentioned in the book. For example, when people wanted to abolish slavery, they didn't use the arguments of "okay, it's bad for the enslaved people." They were using arguments like: "okay, our boys are dying on ships — white English sailors." And I think, yeah, it's often these arguments that hit harder and work with specific audiences. If you want to build a coalition, you need to use different arguments with different groups.

[00:28:37] Beatrice: Yeah. I think of it as: when you think about people doing business and trying to make money, you definitely collaborate with people you don't agree with. And that's probably a valid point here.

[00:28:57] Jan-Willem: Yeah. And I think that's almost key if you want to be effective. Think about the food transition and the animal movement. There are a lot of politicians — what do they care about? Economic growth. So if you publish reports just on animal welfare or climate change, yeah, that won't fly with specific politicians.

If you write reports on: hey, what is the economic potential for the food transition for Europe? What if we create enormous fermentation companies and subsidize them? Maybe we make sure there's no regulation or red tape for bringing novel foods to the market. Yeah, that will fly with different politicians, different groups in society.

And what about farmers — how can they benefit from this transition? That's a very neglected question that not a lot of people ask. And I'm super proud of a lot of our fellows because they ask these questions and think: okay, how can we actually get more people on board with this transition away from animal products?

[00:29:58] Beatrice: Yeah. So one of the critiques I've heard about moral ambition is that it's a message for people who are already very privileged — educated, Western. And how do you think about that? Is this work only focusing on Europe and the US, or what does this look like if we think outside of those contexts?

[00:30:31] Jan-Willem: Yeah, it's maybe good to say — of course we started in the Netherlands. Rutger is Dutch, I'm Dutch, the other co-founders are Dutch. We started in Brussels because I had a career there before. So that was the lever that we knew, and that was also a bit opportunistic. Obviously, as an entrepreneur, how you start — you don't start in a market that you don't know. So we understood what was happening here.

And the same for the US, to a certain extent. Rutger moved to the US, we have local staff. So I think that's also where we thought: okay, this is actually where we can start. The US still has a lot of cultural significance. So we thought: if we can create this movement at Harvard, at other Ivy League universities, that will also make moral ambition more prestigious in wider society. That was a very conscious choice.

But do I believe this is the only way, or the only group that can make impact? No, not at all. Maybe one example I'm currently working on is with local Indian entrepreneurs, thinking about a local Indian incubator to solve the largest issues there. It would be run by Indians, the entrepreneurs would be sourced from India, and it would be funded by local people. So that's an example of where we want to expand geographically beyond Europe and the US.

The other example is the tax fairness program. If you think about tax fairness as a topic, it requires a global approach. So we will also have fellows in the Global South for this program, because I think it's impossible to solve without global support and having people in the Global South at the table, having an active say in everything that's happening.

So I think — yeah. There were some founder effects, and the cultural significance we saw in changing the culture of success in the US. But it's something we really want to change and that we're working on right now.

[00:32:41] Beatrice: Yeah. And I think that also, to some extent, just makes sense — these are largely parts of the world where you already live in a sort of post-scarcity world, or a lot of people do. Not everyone, obviously. Where you have the luxury to be able to start thinking about these things because you don't just have to worry about your own survival.

[00:33:05] Jan-Willem: Yeah, that's also a point, although I think in a lot of countries in the Global South there's also an elite. When we think about India, the wealth inequality is just enormous. And there's a privileged class that can absolutely contribute a lot more to society.

But is it only the privileged who should act? I don't believe that's the case either, honestly. If you think about it within the Netherlands, within the US, or within India — I think change can also come from people who don't have any privilege. It's often just a lot harder. Like you said, quitting a well-paid job to go for a career with more insecurity might be hard.

This is also one of the reasons we want to offer stipends to fellows. We don't say: hey, just see if you can contribute, bring your own funding. We will test this a little bit as an experiment in the US, but overall we really try to pay our fellows. They're earning a median local salary for the European fellowship.

We can be a lot more inclusive — and I think that's something we're also working on, if I'm really honest with you. We're currently doing what we call accessibility research. The big question is: through our selection process, through how we speak and market our programs, are there specific groups in society that are unable to participate?

And then of course you can still make the decision: okay, we cannot include everyone. If you want to be effective at Brussels level, you could say: hey, we need more people with vocational education in Brussels. But when we try to bring them in, the European Commission or the think tanks we work with might not want to hire them.

So yeah, there's always a bit of tension there. You can't be a hundred percent inclusive, but I definitely think we can do better on some aspects.

[00:35:06] Beatrice: That's really interesting. I'm sure we could do a lot better as well — you can always do better. So yeah. I just really love the message of moral ambition. I think we need much more of it in the world. And I guess that's what to some extent we're trying to do with the Existential Hope Project — can we raise our level of ambition for just doing better? We could do so much better on so many different aspects. How do you think we can cultivate this better in our society? How can we raise the bar here?

[00:35:46] Jan-Willem: Yeah. This is a great question. After one and a half years, we decided to take a little bit of a step back. We had the launch of the book and the school in Europe, and the same in the US — that was in May 2024. And then we collected all the data from the different programs, started talking with the board — Rutger, me, the other co-founders — and we came to the conclusion that there are three main bottlenecks to moral ambition. Why is there not more moral ambition?

Prestige is the first one. What's the definition of success? And I think it's really important to change that. Tying it back to your question — this is what we need to do. And then the question is: how do you make something more prestigious?

Of course, there are all kinds of lists in the world of the richest people who own the most businesses. But can you create a similar list — or at least put people in the spotlight who have a lot of impact? Create role models, write about them, write about our fellows. I think, yeah, can we go to Harvard? That's why we started there. There's a lot of cultural significance, and can we change the definition of success there?

I think there's one aspect here that's often overlooked by a lot of global movements of do-gooders — and also effective altruism, obviously — and that's the fun aspect. That's really what I try to show people: this is actually a career not only of meaning, but also of fun. Like strategizing about what's the most effective way — sometimes it feels a little bit like scheming together, really thinking strategically about what are the largest levers. And I think that also creates prestige, because I think this is way more intellectually demanding. It requires way more intellectual capacity to think about something like solving wealth inequality or the tobacco epidemic than, let's say, creating more profits for a company that deals in fast-moving consumer goods. I think that's not that challenging — I did that type of work, I think it's just boring. And that's also something we really try to get across. So that's bottleneck one: prestige.

Then there are two other bottlenecks. One of them is money, and they're also a little bit connected, obviously. I think there's still not enough funding to work on the most globally pressing issues. There is a big funding bottleneck. If you look at tobacco in Europe, there's just a severe lack of funding. People don't really care, and sometimes people care because they lost a family member and they'll donate something, but it's marginal. It's not enough.

So that's the second bottleneck. And the third one — I think we talked about this one before — is the lack of clear pathways: pathways that feel credible, where you feel like hey, I'm part of something.

So these are the three bottlenecks that we more or less try to solve in this new strategy. And of course they're very much connected — prestige also makes it easier to raise money, and if you have money, you can create these pathways. But yeah, that's the analysis we did, and that's also part of our strategy: actively thinking about these three bottlenecks all the time, for all the projects we're starting, all the new fellowships, all the collaborations — we always tie it back to one of the three bottlenecks.

[00:39:24] Beatrice: That's really interesting — thanks for identifying those bottlenecks. How to use them—

[00:39:31] Jan-Willem: Now, solving them is the second part. 

[00:39:35] Beatrice: Yeah, that's the challenge. But we'll get to that.

And I think another thing I was thinking as you were talking is that people might feel some level of hopelessness with a lot of these challenges, because they've just been around for a long time, or you just assume that they're unsolvable to some extent. But something that you mentioned earlier in the conversation is that we have new tools at hand that make these issues tractable these days, perhaps.

[00:40:08] Jan-Willem: Correct. Yeah, I think that's — and honestly, there are a lot of bad things about living in 2026, and of course the state of the world is not as we want it to be. But the good thing is indeed that you can use these tools and have an army, let's say, of effective advocates helping you out. So I really see the positives. Of course, the other side will also use these tools, so that's a little bit difficult, but I feel it is a competitive advantage that you can create.

And we really try to work on this. We invest quite a lot in our tech stack to make sure that we use it in the most effective way. And that really excites me, honestly. If we can compete — it's a little bit like thinking about the first people who thought about the flyer, the handout that you can give to people to create attention for a topic. There was one person who once thought of this, and it was a brilliant idea back then. And I think, honestly, leveraging AI is exactly that in this day and age. Wow. And yeah, that's what we try to do, what we try to convince people of as much as possible.

[00:41:21] Beatrice: And so now — you've been doing this for a little while, and I assume you've watched a few people do this: trying to leave their well-paid jobs for more high-impact work. What have you seen that they tend to struggle with, or what holds them back? And then what helps them let go, and what do they find most rewarding as they make the transition?

[00:41:50] Jan-Willem: Yeah. And again, I can tie this back to the bottlenecks. One thing I think people struggle with is that you are leaving a career which has prestige. When I left my consulting job, my parents were also like: "Are you sure you want to leave? You got this permanent contract, it's well paid." And that makes it really hard for people to leave.

So I think the best advice I could give people is: make sure that your lifestyle — or let's put it a different way — don't adjust your lifestyle too much when you join an industry like that to learn. I still think that could be fair. But then make sure that you indeed don't inflate your lifestyle. Buy the most expensive house you can, have the largest mortgage and just maximize that — I think that's often wrong. Make sure that you're still free to pick a different career.

I also think giving 10% of your income, for example, could be very smart if you join an industry like that, because that already ties you to the idea of: I'm a do-gooder. I think there's some kind of psychological effect apart from the impact, which is massive of course. Like I said, money is still a big bottleneck — we need more capital.

So those are some pieces of advice. And then yeah, the other part is obviously: where should I go? When you're working 60 hours a week in management consulting, when the weekend comes you just want to go out, maybe forget a little, and you don't really make time and space to think. So you need to offer very clear pathways, where you're also part of a group.

And tying that back to — okay, your family is saying: why do you make this decision? Your friends are saying: why would you do that, why would you join this program? I think it's really important to give people a peer group of others who made the same decision, people who you really value and respect. If you feel: hey, I'm part of this bigger group — that's why I don't believe so much in individual career grants. I really believe in this cohort-based approach of bringing small groups of committed citizens together. That's core to our theory of change for that reason.

So those are the things I observe. And then during the program, most people are — I would say — pretty convinced. What I see people struggle with sometimes is the pace of change, especially in the role of policy. And a lot of our fellowships focus on policy change. Not all of them, but a lot. It takes a long time, and if you're used to a very fast-paced work environment in management consulting, banking, or corporate law, yeah, this can be quite tough, honestly.

That's also a reason that we always have a mixed cohort. There are always some people in there who are already do-gooders and just want to be more effective, want to be part of a peer group. I think it's super important because they can ground these worries. They can say: yeah, that's just part of doing the work. It sometimes takes decades. If I think about wealth taxation — yeah, there won't be a global wealth tax next year, and also not the year after, but maybe in a few years. Yes. So yeah, I think that's something that fellows struggle with.

[00:45:14] Beatrice: And what do they find most rewarding when they go through with it?

[00:45:22] Jan-Willem: That's interesting. Of course the reason that I do my work is the impact. It's not honestly — or at least the primary motivation is not that I help people in, let's say, Western countries, or maybe later on India, to shift their career. That's not my primary motivation. It's really the impact.

But what I observe is so interesting — it's this personal process, this transformational process that people go through. And that's really what they feel. There was one person — a fellow from last year — who sent me this postcard. He really said: "Wow, this was just such a life-changing experience, going through this program, being part of this, seeing the world through a different lens and feeling empowered."

I think that's also — like you said, a lot of people these days feel: I cannot really make an impact, these forces are too big. And that's really what we try to get across: you are an agent, you're like a playable character that can actually make a difference. And seeing that transformation is super rewarding for me. But of course, more so for the fellows who go through this process.

[00:46:34] Beatrice: Yeah. And you've managed to, in a very short time, build this big community — 25,000 members now. And if you fast forward ten years, what does success look like for your work and the School for Moral Ambition?

[00:46:56] Jan-Willem: Yeah. And again, tying it back to our strategy and the bottlenecks. One is that a morally ambitious career is as prestigious — or hopefully more prestigious — than a career in traditional consulting, finance, or other top careers. Two, funding is no longer a bottleneck — and funding for the most important issues.

Of course there will always be issues, so this is a little bit of a North Star. But here too, I feel we can cause quite a lot of change. One thing I didn't mention — that happened last year — is that we started a movement called the Profits for Good Movement to work on this. Together with Peter Singer, the well-known philosopher, we had a conference in Amsterdam bringing together all kinds of companies who have the willingness to donate a substantial amount of their profits to nonprofits, to charity.

On the back of that, in the aftermath, we created an organization called Profits for Good, that my co-founder Julia will run. She's currently on maternity leave, but when she comes back she will pick this up and create this global movement to solve the lack of capital in this space.

Yeah, I think in ten years Profits for Good becomes the norm. For profit-making businesses — at least private businesses — and also giving becomes a norm. Like I said, people who still want to have this traditional career: I want giving 10% of your income to be just a global norm at that point. And that could solve this issue.

So that's maybe on the capital side. And then on the pathways side — in ten years, it should be so easy for you as a morally ambitious person who wants to do good, to find your cause, to find a program that you can enter, that you feel like: hey, I'm getting the best education, I'm working with the best people. And you can just see this clearly. You don't need to look in the corners of the internet to find a program — it's just really easy to find.

And when I look at the organizational objectives — if you ask me what I eventually care about, of course it's change in the world. And some of these issues just need to be solved. So I hope in ten years factory farming will have been reduced by a very big amount, and that our fellows, but also people that we attract to the ideal of moral ambition, contribute in a very large way. So that's really about the change I eventually want to see in the world. The school is just a vehicle for change in that sense.

[00:49:32] Beatrice: Yeah. I agree very much with what you said. And I think one thing that stuck with me is also the point of community. Just because — like you've been talking about — there are all sorts of incentives that come at you. Even you mentioned your family asking: should you really do this? All the incentives sort of tip you in one direction right now.

[00:49:58] Jan-Willem: Yes.

[00:49:58] Beatrice: And having a sort of community, someone that actually values you doing this work — and you can at least have some sort of status, which was one of the bottlenecks, right? Status within a community where this is really appreciated, working on these things.

[00:50:18] Jan-Willem: Yeah. That's why community is so important. Like I said, why we have fellowships with 12 people and not one.

[00:50:27] Beatrice: Yeah. Yeah. So that's something that — yeah, let's work on building that over the next ten years. So hopefully someone listening to this conversation now is thinking: okay, I really should do this. I should do a career shift. What do you recommend? Where do they start?

[00:50:54] Jan-Willem: Yeah, I would say the Moral Ambition Circle program — you can find it on the website. We've thought a lot about it. It offers a clear structure to start thinking about this, because that's maybe my main piece of advice: this is not easy.

If you think about changing the world, some people just have the intuition of: let's go with the first topic that I read about, and they start reading about it and want to work on it. And my advice would be: take a step back. Think a little bit more about, okay, what is actually on the to-do list of the world at the moment?

Don't start too much with your passion, because I feel your passion is malleable — you can change it quite a bit. My passion changed a lot. I worked on artificial intelligence policy, I ran a talent organization there. I wasn't interested in AI ten years ago. I became really interested. Same for the food transition, same for tobacco, same for all these topics. I feel if you start reading about something and follow it, it becomes more interesting and it becomes your passion.

So that's maybe what we try to achieve in these circles. And then what we try to do is let people think about their own theory of change. Let's start with: okay, what do I actually have? What are the skills? What's the financial capital? What's the network? What's my nationality? That matters a lot as well, often for what you can work on in a very effective way. So really think: what do I have and how can I use it best?

And you can do that through our Circle program. And the cool thing about that is that you'll do it together with others. Again, it's not a solo journey of completing a set of career templates. It's a collective journey.

So yeah, that's the Circle program. If you feel that's not for you — and it could be — there are plenty of other organizations that offer these templates or career advice. Think about 80,000 Hours, Probably Good, or more cause-specific organizations. I mentioned a few earlier. So that's, I think, where I would start. And surround yourself with other people.

If you don't do it through the Circle, find peers. Go on our platform. Let's say you live in Mumbai — in India, we have people from Mumbai on our platform. You can send them a message and say: hey, let's hang out, let's have a beer or a coffee and talk about improving the world. That's, I think, where I would start.

And then of course there's a lot of tailored career advice for people who are further along in their career or very early career. One interesting thought is always: okay, if I cannot find that job — and that's what we hear a lot, finding a job with a lot of impact is super hard — you can always just go back to your default. Maybe join an organization that at least is not doing active harm. Like I said, then make sure that you don't have a lot of lifestyle inflation. Make sure you donate some money to charity. That's also fine, that's also a great first step. And make sure that you have people in your environment who actually challenge you.

I have this one friend who started at McKinsey and said: one year. And then after one year he said: one more year. And that went on until he was a partner. And I think the main reason was that he wasn't surrounded by a group of people who actually challenged him. I did it a little bit — maybe not enough, maybe I should have done it more — but yeah, I think that's just super important.

[00:54:30] Beatrice: Yeah. Basically there are plenty of places to jump in these days, so that's really great. Yeah. I will finish with one last question that we always ask everyone, which is: what's the best advice that you ever received?

[00:54:50] Jan-Willem: Yeah. It's interesting. In this world, it feels maybe a bit like this answer goes against what I just gave to your last question.

I think there is a group of folks in the world that just doesn't think that much and they just start doing good. But I also think the risk — especially for people who are more, let's say, effective altruist-minded — is to just analyze and overanalyze, keep thinking, write another document, think about all the downside risks, which is all super important and you do need to think. But I also feel with a lot of things, we don't know what actually works. There are so many more uncertainties.

So when I entered the do-gooder space, I spoke with someone who said: it's amazing that you enter this space. But what you can really bring here, where you add value, is this action mindset — which is one of the founding principles of the school. And use it even when people sometimes say: yeah, you need to think longer, or you need to do less, or — I don't know. It's also about collecting data, information, trying what works and what doesn't. And I thought that was such a valuable piece of advice.

So when I started my former organization, Talos, we just tried, I think, ten different programs when we started out. We collected data, we quit, we collected data, we quit. And then at one point we found two programs that actually worked, and that still exist today. So yeah, I think that was such a great piece of advice in this world where people tend to overthink. It's good to sometimes just do and take action.

[00:56:25] Beatrice: Yeah. I very much agree. Thank you so much for joining us, Jan-Willem.

[00:56:32] Jan-Willem: Yeah, thanks.