About Leaf
Explore Tomorrow
Our mission and vision
Leaf is a nonprofit Academy and Fellowship 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 identify and support exceptional young people with the potential to do extraordinary good. Our courses challenge students to think deeply, reason clearly, and act ambitiously. By bringing them together in selective cohorts, we aim to foster a community where they inspire and push each other toward lives of meaning and positive impact.
We are inspired by and have roots in recent movements like effective altruism and moral ambition, but we don’t treat any single philosophy as dogma. Instead, we encourage students to wrestle with hard questions: How can we best use our talents to improve the world? Which problems are most urgent? Where are we most likely to be wrong? We want participants to engage critically, not just adopt a set of ready-made answers.
We select Finalists and Fellows carefully to make our core programs as impactful as possible with the resources we have available. At the same time, we strive to build a wider community where every altruistic teenager can find support, inspiration, and a place to belong, and therefore offer our online courses and community for free to all applicants.
Our courses are not just about learning ideas in the abstract. We push students to test them, critique them, and turn them into projects, passions, and careers that matter. Our alumni go on to pursue impactful research, tackle pressing global problems, advocate for positive change in their local and global communities, and build organizations of their own.
Ultimately, we want every participant to discover meaningful opportunities to do good, and the skills and community to act on them.
Our funding
Leaf is a US-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Although our programs are made available for free, we’re extremely grateful that more than three-quarters of parents of our students donate to Leaf to help us keep offering these opportunities.
The majority of our remaining funding comes from Carina Initiatives, whose mission is to “send more kids from more communities to the frontiers of science and technology.”
Previously, much of our funding came from from the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund. They provide 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.
Our team
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Jonah Boucher - Managing Director
Jonah is a teacher and curriculum designer in the US. He has supported and led projects to help talented and passionate high school and college students lead impactful and fulfilling lives. Jonah recently graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and previously came first in his class (of over 500) at Hamilton College with degrees in Mathematics and Environmental Science.
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Sam Smith - AI Course Lead and Special Projects Lead
Sam is a 3rd Year Maths and Philosophy Student at University of Bristol, EA Bristol President, experienced Non-Trivial facilitator, and a proud Leaf alumni from our early residential programme days! Their specialty is helping people discover and fulfill their potential to make meaningful impact to ensure AI goes well for humanity.
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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.
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Hannah Rowberry - Uni 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!
Board of Directors
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Rebekah Blume
Director
Rebekah is a mixed-methods evaluation consultant with deep experience helping nonprofits generate insight and learn from their impact. She also works with Effective Thesis, helping measure the long-term impact of research guidance programs for early-career scholars. Rebekah’s thoughtful, systems-aware approach to organizational learning will be instrumental as Leaf sharpens its impact evaluation and supports the next generation of high-impact leaders.
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Jamie Harris
President
Jamie is the Courses Project Lead at the Centre for Effective Altruism, where he designs and runs online programmes that empower talented professionals to explore how they can do the most good. He also serves as a fund manager at the Effective Altruism Infrastructure Fund, supporting promising projects with access to capital, talent, and strategic insight. Jamie directed Leaf for four years and previously worked as a teacher, researcher, and program builder across multiple high-impact organizations, including Macroscopic Ventures, Sentience Institute, and Animal Advocacy Careers.
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Joy Wiersum
Director
Joy is an impact and leadership strategist with nearly two decades of experience accelerating growth and shaping leadership. She has led senior growth and organizational design efforts at the WHO Academy, shaped board and CEO transitions as an advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates, and now provides strategic and leadership support to mission-driven organizations worldwide. Her expertise spans scale-up strategy, leadership development, and cross-sector collaboration, making her an invaluable guide as Leaf grows its global presence and long-term impact.