A Candid Conversation About Foreign Aid
Why empathy matters, energy isn’t boring, and public service deserves a rebrand
I co-host the High Energy Planet podcast with my brilliant friend and colleague Katie Auth. Every few weeks, we team up to interview someone working on bold ideas to solve global energy poverty—often digging into both the technical weeds and the human stories behind the work.
But in our latest episode, we did something different.
No guests. No notes. Just the two of us—talking shop, unpacking our feelings, and reflecting on this strange, unsettling moment in international development. From the political attacks on USAID and the broader aid architecture, to what it means to dedicate your life to public service in a world that increasingly values individual hustle over collective good—we let it all out.
Listening back, I was surprised by how much the conversation moved me. Here are five takeaways that really stuck with me:
It’s hard to humanize energy. Unlike global health, which has clear and immediate human stakes, energy often disappears into a fog of wonky terminology and policy jargon. But behind every megawatt are stories that matter—like rural clinics lit up for the first time. We need to get better at telling those stories. We also need to center the tangible services that electricity enables—lighting, cooling, refrigeration, entertainment, productivity—not just the infrastructure that delivers it. Part of energy’s power is its ubiquity, but that very ubiquity makes it easier to abstract. And in the fight against energy poverty, abstraction is the enemy.
Critique is not betrayal. It’s tempting to go into full defense mode when beloved institutions are under attack. But saving a system only makes sense if it’s in service of something bigger. We have to be brave enough to imagine and build something better—even as we fight to protect what remains.
The transactional turn is real—but incomplete. Across the U.S. and Europe, support for aid is waning, replaced by a colder calculus of national interest. How does this spending serve our security, our economy, our global leverage? If we want this work to survive, we’ll need to get more fluent in that language—yes, showing how development investments can open markets, support American jobs, or advance geopolitical goals. But we also can’t lose the plot: people still want to believe their countries are doing good in the world. Not everything is zero sum. We shouldn’t surrender our human values just to fit a cynical narrative. The best case for aid is still one that blends strategic interest with moral imagination. Empathy isn’t for suckers (sorry, Elon).
Civil servants are not the enemy. The quiet, tireless work of public servants is rarely celebrated—and now, it’s being openly vilified. I grew up in a family of public servants. I know what it means to dedicate your life to work that’s not flashy, but profoundly important. One of the essential tasks in the rebuilding ahead will be to Make Public Service Great Again (we’ll probably need a better acronym…). Young people today are bombarded with messages that glorify self-interest, fast wealth, and individual success—be a founder, be a disruptor, live fabulously or you’re a failure. Against that backdrop, public service can seem like the uncool option. We have a responsibility to change that narrative—to show that purpose, impact, and service are not just noble, but deeply fulfilling. And to remind the world that serving something bigger than yourself—from the classroom to the quiet machinery of government—is what truly keeps society running.
My path here wasn’t straight—and that’s the point. At the start of the episode, Katie and I reflected on our time in government and the winding roads that brought us there. Listening back, I was struck by how tidy my career arc sounds in retrospect: a physicist determined to bridge science and African development, who now does exactly that. But the truth is, it was anything but linear—a beautiful accident, a random walk that only made sense looking back. When young people ask how to "get where I am," I try to share the true story: gather experiences, follow your curiosity, and pay attention to what energizes you. My time in government was a major watershed—it helped me start connecting those dots in the real world for the first time. I’ll forever be grateful for that.
You can listen to the full episode here. And if it resonates, please share your own reflections in the comments. This moment is hard, but it’s also clarifying—and I’d love to hear how others are navigating it.