Five and Dime

Yesterday, Common Group, the organization I founded in 2020, turned five. What better way to celebrate than sharing with my closest friends and colleagues the priceless gift ... of a new blog.

I know your first reaction is almost certainly, "the world needs more blogs and I should subscribe immediately," but nonetheless I should explain why I’m starting this, and what I hope to achieve by doing so.

After five years of running Common Group, and approaching ~$150 million of philanthropic and state funds deployed, we are sitting on an abundance of learnings and insights that feel ready to share with the world.

These range from the specific, within our focus areas of education, workforce and human capital, to the general, across social impact and philanthropy, and how government, business, and the third sector act, and interact.

Building from these insights, Hopeful Skeptic will be an exploration, of our ability to create more good in the world, including thorny questions around “what is good”, and with an explicit focus on where we can be doing better, both collectively and individually.

The title, Hopeful Skeptic signals a desire to be both optimistic and evidence-based, and I hope readers will experience the writing as ideas and questions that are often left unspoken, at least in public. Through this, I hope to shine light on some of the challenges bedeviling society right now, and think through together what we might do about them. 

Over the next few weeks, expect posts on Progress, innovation, collective action, and hopeful skepticism itself. Beyond that, the wind will take us where it will, always with a human hand holding the pen.

I hope you all will get as much benefit from reading these as I do from writing them, and that you'll consider subscribing and sharing with friends if you do.

Without further ado, a fresh take on jobs and AI...