--- alias: - Alexander Berger category: AI & Effective Altruism created: 2026-09-23 location: San Francisco, California relations: - fn: 1 role: researcher start: 2011 type: employed_by with: '[[GiveWell]]' - fn: 4 role: cofounder, first leading its policy philanthropy work start: 2011 type: founded with: '[[Open Philanthropy]]' summary: Stanford-trained GiveWell researcher who cofounded Open Philanthropy, became its co-CEO in 2021 and sole CEO in 2023, and holds the same titles at its 501(c)(4) Action Fund. tags: - Person - EffectiveAltruism - OpenPhilanthropy - CoefficientGiving - GiveWell - StanfordUniversity updated: 2026-09-23 --- Alexander Berger is the chief executive of [Open Philanthropy](/organizations/open-philanthropy/), renamed Coefficient Giving in November 2025, the grantmaker funded chiefly by [Dustin Moskovitz](/people/dustin-moskovitz/) and [Cari Tuna](/people/cari-tuna/) through their foundation [Good Ventures](/organizations/good-ventures/). He joined [GiveWell](/organizations/givewell/) from [Stanford University](/organizations/stanford-university/), cofounded Open Philanthropy when it was still GiveWell Labs, became co-chief executive with [Holden Karnofsky](/people/holden-karnofsky/) in June 2021 and sole chief executive in July 2023. He has been a director of the couple's 501(c)(4), the [Open Philanthropy Action Fund](/organizations/open-philanthropy-action-fund/), since 2018, and its returns have carried his Open Philanthropy officer titles since 2021.[^1][^2][^3][^4][^5] ### Stanford Berger graduated from Stanford in 2011 with a B.A. in philosophy and also holds a Stanford M.A. in education policy.[^2] As a freshman he heard the political scientist Rob Reich as a guest lecturer, took Reich's courses over the next two years, and completed the Honors Program in Ethics in Society with Reich, the faculty director of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, as his thesis advisor. In an honors seminar in his junior year he read a paper noting how safe kidney donation had become; the same year he came across GiveWell, the charity evaluator Karnofsky and [Elie Hassenfeld](/people/elie-hassenfeld/) had founded in 2007, and began volunteering for it. After graduating he worked there as a researcher "conducting evidence reviews and cost-effectiveness analyses for potential top charities." A second alumna of the same honors program, Claire Zabel of the 2013-14 cohort, went on to lead Open Philanthropy's grantmaking on effective altruism.[^1][^2] ### The Kidney Op-Ed On December 5, 2011, about six months after graduating, Berger published "Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal" in *[The New York Times](/organizations/new-york-times/)*, datelined [San Francisco](/places/san-francisco/): "On Thursday, I will donate one of my kidneys to someone I've never met." He gave his age as 21. "When I first told some friends and family that I wanted to donate a kidney, they assumed I'd gone off my rocker," he wrote. "They saw it as a crazy act of self-sacrifice, rather than what it is," which he called "one of the many ways a reasonably altruistic person can help others." He argued that the 1984 federal ban on compensating kidney donors left more than 34,000 people joining the waiting list in 2010 against fewer than 17,000 transplants, that "the victims of the current ban are disproportionately African-American and poor," and that a regulated market in which "only the government or a chosen nonprofit would be allowed to purchase the kidneys," at a price "somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000," paid by insurers or Medicare, "could actually save the government money" against the cost of dialysis. He cited a ruling of the previous week by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowing compensation for bone marrow donors.[^6] ### Open Philanthropy Berger was, in Open Philanthropy's own biography of him, "a cofounder of Open Philanthropy" who "led our initial process for selecting focus areas and hiring and training program officers within them."[^2] In 2018 he told the *[Stanford Social Innovation Review](/organizations/stanford-social-innovation-review/)* writer [Marc Gunther](/people/marc-gunther/), who counted seven entities around Tuna (among them the Open Philanthropy Project LLC, the Action Fund, two donor-advised funds at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Good Ventures Foundation and Good Ventures LLC), that "each has a reason for being" and that "tax considerations are key."[^7] On June 16, 2021, Karnofsky announced that Berger "has been promoted to co-CEO," writing that he had "for some time" been "the primary leader for most of our work on causes focused on maximizing verifiable impact within our lifetimes." The same post renamed that portfolio "Global Health and Wellbeing" in place of "near-termism" and stated: "We now have a dual-CEO structure, with both of us reporting directly to the board." Karnofsky kept biosecurity and pandemic preparedness and "potential risks from advanced AI"; Berger took global health and development "(including to GiveWell-recommended charities)," scientific research, farm animal welfare and criminal justice reform.[^3] On July 27, 2023, Karnofsky wrote "on behalf of Open Philanthropy's board" that Berger "is now sole CEO," that Berger had run the organization during Karnofsky's leave of absence, and that the two had worked together since 2011; Berger "co-founded Open Philanthropy (back when it was GiveWell Labs), initially leading our policy philanthropy work." Karnofsky's own title changed "from co-CEO to Director of AI Strategy," and Emily Oehlsen was promoted to managing director over Global Health and Wellbeing. Tuna, styled in the post as president, said: "Dustin and I have worked closely with Alexander for many years, and he's helped us think through many of the toughest questions we've faced as philanthropists." Berger said the mission "resonates just as much with me today as it did when Holden, Cari, Dustin and I were starting to think about it together."[^4] In 2026 Coefficient Giving listed Berger as chief executive, Tuna as chair and Oehlsen as president.[^8] Berger said that year that the organization had spent about a tenth of the Gates Foundation's budget in 2025 and more than twice that so far in 2026, and, of its standing with [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/), whose president [Daniela Amodei](/people/daniela-amodei/) is married to Karnofsky: "We're definitely not the Anthropic Foundation."[^9] ### The Action Fund The Open Philanthropy Action Fund, EIN 81-2644663, files in care of Apercen Partners LLC at 314 Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto, the address of the Good Ventures Foundation. Berger first appears on its return for 2018 as a director, alongside Tuna as president, Karnofsky as chief executive, Moskovitz, [Divesh Makan](/people/divesh-makan/) and Hassenfeld. He was listed as co-CEO and director for 2021 and 2022, as chief executive and director "(co-CEO thru 7/23/23)" for 2023, and as chief executive and director for 2024, when Karnofsky was listed only as a director. None of the fund's officers or directors was paid by it.[^5] [^1]: Aguilera, Diana. "Accomplishing as Much Good as Possible: Honors Alum Alexander Berger Paves the Way for More Effective Giving." McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University, November 12, 2021. https://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/news/accomplishing-much-good-possible-honors-alum-alexander-berger-paves-way-more-effective-giving [^2]: Open Philanthropy, "Alexander Berger," team biography, archived November 12, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251112031533/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/alexander-berger/ [^3]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Open Philanthropy's New Co-CEO." Open Philanthropy blog, June 16, 2021, archived May 31, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220531031049/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/open-philanthropys-new-co-ceo [^4]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, republished by Coefficient Giving, archived March 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/ [^5]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663 [^6]: Berger, Alexander. "Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal." *The New York Times,* December 5, 2011, archived October 24, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251024084715/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/why-selling-kidneys-should-be-legal.html [^7]: Gunther, Marc. "Giving in the Light of Reason." *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* Summer 2018. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason [^8]: Coefficient Giving, "Team," accessed September 2026. https://coefficientgiving.org/about-us/team/ [^9]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom