Effective Leadership For Business Sustainability | Big Think

Effective Leadership For Business Sustainability

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Raising money for charity is one thing. Knowing where to give it is another. When some charities are 100 times more effective than others, a world champion poker player knows how to spot who's bluffing. Liv Boeree — one of the best poker players in the world — has gotten together with some other poker pros to make better decisions about giving to charity, and encourages others to look further into more transparent charities. You can find out more about Liv at www.livboeree.com.

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LIV BOEREE:

Olivia "Liv" Boeree is a poker player, TV presenter and model from England who won the 2010 European Poker Tour in Sanremo. Born in Kent, Boeree studied at Ashford School before going on to earn a First Class Honours degree in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. She was the #1 ranked female player on the Global Poker Index as of November 2015, and #6 on the female all-time live poker winnings list.

Boeree was a keen guitar player in her early twenties, specializing in the heavy metal genre. In University she played lead guitar in the band Dissonance, and in 2006 she briefly featured as lead guitarist for rock/goth band Nemhain before starting her career in poker.

Boeree also modeled in her early twenties for rock and alternative lifestyle features.

Boeree was introduced to the poker industry when she was selected as one of five contestants for the reality TV show Ultimatepoker.com Showdown, which aired on Five in Autumn 2005.

After the show, Boeree began playing poker regularly at the Gutshot Club in London, and from there became an on-screen reporter for Gutshot TV at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Soon after she became the host of Challenge TV's on-line coverage of the European Poker Tour, also appearing as a reporter for the World Series of Poker Europe on WorldSeriesofPoker.com.

On 21 April 2010, Boeree won the European Poker Tour main event in San Remo, at the time the largest ever poker tournament held on European soil. Boeree won €1,250,000 and thereby became the third woman ever to win an EPT title.

She has shown continuous success on the EPT circuit with twelve Main Event cashes to date. Other notable results include a 2nd place in the 2014 UKIPT Edinburgh Main Event a 3rd place in the EPT Barcelona High Roller event for €391,000 in August 2015.

Boeree has been a member of Team PokerStars Pro since September 2010. Her total live tournament winnings exceed $3,000,000.

In February 2016 she was announced as the Team Manager of the Global Poker League team "The London Royals".

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TRANSCRIPT:

Liv Boeree: So effective altruism is basically applying the scientific method and evidence and analysis to the whole concept of charity.

It's about sort of looking in the world—you know, the world has a gazillion problems, a lot of them are very, very bad, but some are easier to solve than others, some are cheaper to solve than others, and so there are some sort of actions that we can take that are more effective than others in reducing suffering or increasing the happiness in the world.

And effective altruism is basically about identifying: what are those methods of improving the world as quickly as possible and as effectively as possible.

So within the community, there are sort of teams of analysts looking at these problems and figuring out the best interventions, the best charities that are out there, and then raising awareness of it.

Picking a charity is tough, and the things to look for—I guess to start with, is the cause area in itself neglected?

There's countless different problems in the world and some of them are far more researched or receive a lot more funding than others, and similarly there are some problems that are actually—that there's just a ton more room for funding, where your money can make a very big difference.

So that's the first thing to look for: if it's neglected.

Next thing is: is the charity that you're going to donate for giving you the maximum bang for your buck? Will it help the most people per dollar that's donated?

Another thing to look for is: are the results that it is likely to generate measurable? Because if we can't measure what the charity is doing, well, then we just don't really know how effective it is. So yeah those are sort of some key indicators to look for.

Also: is the charity transparent? No...

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