Holden Karnofsky

Holden Karnofsky is an American non-profit executive based in San Francisco, California. He is co-founder and co-CEO of Open Philanthropy, and co-founder of GiveWell. He is a notable proponent of effective altruism.

Karnofsky graduated from Harvard University with a degree in social studies in 2003.¹⁾ At Harvard, he was a member of the Harvard Lampoon.²⁾

After graduating, he worked at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management fund based in Westport, Connecticut.^{3) 4)}

At Bridgewater, Karnofsky met his future GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld. In 2006, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld started a charity club where they and other Bridgewater employees pooled in money and investigated the best charities to donate the money to. In mid-2007, with donations from their colleagues, Karnofsky and Hassenfeld formed a fund called “The Clear Fund”, and quit their jobs to work full time on GiveWell, whose goal was to allocate the money in the Clear Fund to the best charities.⁵⁾

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