About Leaf

Explore Tomorrow

Our mission and vision

Leaf is an independent nonprofit that supports exceptional teenagers to explore how they can best save lives, help others, or change the course of history.

This includes:

  • Engaging with relevant ideas and opportunities

  • Making informed academic and career choices

  • Developing sustainable habits for long-term impact

Of course, we have a great time and make lasting friendships along the way.

Our philosophy

We seek to identify and support outstanding young people who we expect will most benefit from and best contribute to our programmes and goals:

  • We want fellows to be surrounded by people who are curious and excited to dive deep into challenging questions.

  • We explore complex problems, and the most promising routes to tackling them are often highly difficult and competitive.

  • As an organisation, our time and resources are limited — we can’t support all the wonderful young people who send applications to us.

Our programmes focus on exploring the research question of “effective altruism”: how can we do the most good? There are no clear, objective answers here, and it’s not even obvious that this is the best question to be asking. So we encourage participants to both consider and critique the new ideas that they encounter during our programmes.

Leaf’s staff are, to varying extents, part of the effective altruism community, and we’re glad to be able to connect participants to a wider network of researchers, entrepreneurs, and advocates aiming to do as much good as possible.

Our funding

Most our funding has come from the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund. Effective Altruism Funds provides money for projects and charities ranging from healthcare in the Global South, to advocacy for animal welfare reforms, to research into ways to develop safe artificial intelligence.  

The “infrastructure” fund specifically supports projects like Leaf that “could multiply the impact of direct work” (i.e. work that more directly addresses pressing problems), “including projects that… run events, disseminate information, or fundraise for effective charities.” The idea is that these sorts of projects might end up making more of a difference towards addressing pressing problems than some efforts to tackle those problems more directly.

Although our programmes are all offered for free, we’re extremely grateful that many parents have willingly donated to Leaf to help us keep offering these opportunities.

Our team

  • Jamie Harris - Managing Director

    After graduating with a first-class degree in history from the University of Oxford, Jamie secured a distinction in his Postgraduate Certificate of Education and taught for several years at a UK Sixth Form college. He then became a researcher at a think tank researching long-term social and technological change and co-founded a nonprofit providing careers advice to individuals hoping to make a positive impact.

  • Claire MacDonald - Safeguarding Lead

    Claire is studying philosophy at Durham University. She completed an exchange year at De Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, where she became an editor and author of the magazine Qualia. She works part-time helping support and empower people with learning disabilities and autism. She is also a Student Ambassador for Durham Uni and Welfare Officer for EA Durham.

  • Hannah Rowberry - University Admissions Support

    Hannah has a first class degree in natural sciences and a PGCE in secondary education, both from the University of Cambridge. After a few years in teaching, Hannah worked as an admissions and access officer at three Oxford colleges — Christ Church, Exeter, and Lady Margaret Hall — and now works as an admissions consultant.

Individual programmes are also supported by relevant experts, speakers, facilitators, and alumni. Not all staff are listed on our site!