Non-Profit and Public Interest

The values that drew me to philosophy—refusing to settle for shallow explanations, deep curiosity, the conviction that making the world better requires clear thinking about what "better" actually means—are the same values that led me to public service. As a legislative staffer working on AI policy in the New York State Assembly, I formalize complicated, often-conflicting ideas into legislative text: a process full of edge cases and precise definitions that feels surprisingly like writing a philosophy paper. The make-or-break moments require quickly constructing detailed arguments and identifying the premises on which an opponent's position depends. And if you can thrive under a UChicago workload, you're more than ready to juggle long-term projects with the inevitable last-minute rewrites.

To what sort of life should one aspire? Should we follow Aristotle’s suggestion from the Nicomachean Ethics, that human flourishing (eudaimonia) can be reached only by the practice of intellectual and moral virtues? Should it be, as Hannah Arendt outlines, one of politically-oriented action, taken in fellowship with others, beyond simply laboring to satisfy one’s basic needs or working towards the creation of a marketable product? This question is one I considered at length as a UChicago philosophy student, and one I’ve continued to mull as a full-fledged adult. The perspective that my philosophical education has offered me on some of life’s biggest questions has affirmed an inner commitment to pursue work that reflects the values of a world I’d like to see - one with a stronger social contract, more courageous, honest discourse, and more beauty. As a filmmaker I have found an outlet for this sort of work that is open to continuing engagement with the questions I considered as a philosophy student.  

In response to the burning of my hometown of Altadena, CA, in last year's Eaton Fire, I returned home to document the activity of the tight-knit community as they struggle to rebuild and return whole. The resulting film I shot and produced, titled All the Walls Came Down, has served as a rallying cry for my town, helping to raise funds to support long-time residents while also engaging with questions of environmental justice, temporality, loss, and living with ever increasing risk in the age of climate catastrophe. In the process of making the film, I also began to practice a craft I intend to continue to refine, which can serve as an artistic medium for responses to my continued philosophical inquiries. Though my path is one less travelled (perhaps especially because my path is one less travelled), my philosophical education serves as an inner guide and constant companion as I plunge forward to the next adventure, wherever it may lead me.

​​​​​What are our obligations to future generations, to other species, or to the land? Can we make rational plans about the course of our lives, or the course of a given day, in an era of heightened uncertainty and instability? Theoretical questions, sure, but ones that carry obvious weight when your job is persuading and organizing others to take action on climate change. I've also found the skills gained through my study of philosophy to be not only practical, but sometimes surprisingly popular. Recently at a meeting, another participant spoke for several minutes, trying to explain an idea to the group. At last they stopped and looked at me and asked, "Hey Meg, can you do that thing you do, that summarizing thing that makes it all clear?" I smiled, "Yeah, I think you were trying to propose that ..."

A good journalist needs to look underneath a news story, to analyze its underpinnings and place it in a cultural, intellectual and historical context. From Heraclitus to Husserl, my University of Chicago undergraduate education in philosophy prepared me to wrest ideas from the mundane, consider them in the abstract and reapply them elsewhere, "to ask," borrowing a metaphor from Heidegger, "the first of all questions." In "Being and Time," Heidegger describes Dasein—roughly, the Being of a human being—as thrown helplessly out of its past and into its future.  "Its own past . . . is not something which follows along after Dasein, but something which already goes ahead of it." For a journalist, especially an editor guiding news coverage, it isn't sufficient merely to grasp what's going on and, proximately, why.  Rather, a journalist must endeavor to understand how cultural and political-economic currents landed us all here and where we're going—how America's past "already goes ahead of it." A history degree would have offered a set of data points useful for reference and a means of systematizing them, and a journalism degree (though not at UChicago!) training in a craft I ultimately got paid to hone. But my philosophy degree taught me something even greater: How to think.

2026 Update: In February 2024 I left the journalism profession after more than 20 years and transitioned into corporate communications for technology companies. The elements of my University of Chicago philosophical education that made me a good editor also help in my new profession: the ability to synthesize large amounts of information into a coherent narrative, to develop and hone arguments, to work with ideas and texts. I miss the sense of mission I had as a newsman, but I enjoy working with cutting-edge technologies and companies, and I don't miss the punishing hours and stress.