MEET THE TEAM

Directing Team

Communications Team

Michael Plant
​Founder and Director

Michael is HLI’s Founder and Director. He is a final year PhD student in philosophy at the University of Oxford whose main area of research is on how best to make people happier. Michael is Peter Singer’s Research Assistant and previously founded Hippo, a happiness tracking app start-up.

Justus Arndt
General Project Manager

Justus works as the manager of the HLI on coordinating everything that is going on in the HLI. He has a Bachelor in Public Governance and has gained some experience working on mental health during an internship for the mental health NGO Sangath in New Delhi.

Barry Grimes
Communications Manager

Barry coordinates HLI’s external communications and stakeholder engagement. He has worked in strategic communication roles across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors and manages communications for the Effective Altruism Global conference series.

Nikita Patel
Website Coordinator

Nikita created and maintains the HLI website. She is currently CEO and Co-Founder of Fortify Health, whose website coordinates, and previously worked at Malaria Consortium as Communications Officer. She has a BA French and German from University of Oxford.

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Research Team

Brendan Eappen
Research Co-Lead MHI

Brendan works on the mental health charity evaluation to find the best mental health charities out there. He is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of fortify health and worked with Partners in Health in Peru on the development of their mental health program.

Jasper Synowski
Research Co-Lead MHI

Jasper is working on the mental health charity section of the HLI. He has a bachelor’s degree in business psychology and is doing his graduate studies in public health. His focus is on global health with special interest in mental health and pandemic preparedness. ​

Jide Alaga
Positive Education Researcher

Jide has a BA in political science and philosophy at the University of Toronto. He joined HLI as a volunteer researcher in February and is currently working on a report on the impact of positive education interventions on mental health.

Stephan Tegtmeier
Personal Happiness Interventions Researcher

Stephan is researching the scalability and strategies of increasing uptake rates of personal happiness interventions. He has a bachelor's degree in Philosophy & Economics and wrote his thesis about the importance of happiness. Currently he is working for a happiness journaling app.

Teis Rasmussen
Careers Researcher

Teis works on identifying exceptionally promising careers for increasing world happiness. He has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in cognitive science, focusing on affective forecasting and the giving-happiness link. Has experience in animal charity fundraising and think tank research/advocacy on subjective well-being.

Contributors 

Lucia Coulter
Paul Davies
Andrew Fisher
Marcin Kowrygo
​Derek Foster​

Amanda Mai
Robin van Dalen
Julian Jamison
Tatjana Visak

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Advisors

Peter Singer
Peter Breitbart