Good Life Resident Program
The Good Life Residents Program is a six-month initiative focused on developing new leaders and elevating bold ideas centered around six economic policy priorities for the Roosevelt Institute, as part of its Good Life Agenda. Residents will produce short, original policy essays and engage in structured dialogue with peers and senior advisors on key issues shaping economic security—such as housing, banking, Social Security, or AI. Each program will culminate in a public event that will amplify these new ideas/voices and host a dialogue to discuss and debate various national and state-level policy options.
What Residents Will Do:
- Belong to a small cohort (3–4 residents) focused on each topic
- Develop and author a ~1,500-word essay advancing a bold, people-centered policy vision aligned with Roosevelt Institute’s worldview, focusing on a topic-specific prompt.
- Participate in a culminating public event highlighting residents’ ideas and perspectives and collaborate with Roosevelt staff to prepare for the event
- Contribute to press opportunities, as applicable (op-eds, reporter calls, etc.)
- Discuss their topic with assigned Topic Advisors, Roosevelt staff, and other residents
- Serve as ambassadors of the Good Life Agenda within their professional and public networks
Compensation: Residents will be provided $3,000 plus travel and accommodations, if needed, for the culminating event.
Structure: Good Life Residents will work closely with Roosevelt Think Tank directors, as well as senior leaders across the organization. Each topic area will include:
- 3–4 Good Life Residents
- 1–2 Topic Advisors: Senior experts who can guide the residents, offer strategic and intellectual mentorship, and moderate discussions at the events/debates. Advisors will represent deep experience in the field—academics, policy leaders, organizers, or government practitioners.
Program Term: 6 months
Time Commitment: Part-Time (~5–8 hours/month)
Location: Remote; Travel may be requested for select convenings
AI and Finance Residents Program
The enormous and breakneck investment in generative AI technology and infrastructure is creating distortions in the economy, affecting the stock market, profit measures, bond issuance, the pace and composition of economic growth, job creation, and trade policy. Just seven tech companies account for more than a third of the S&P 500’s market capitalization. Complex, sometimes circular financial arrangements are obscuring risks and fragility. Meanwhile, AI investment is minting billionaires while directing resources away from other uses and squeezing labor, reinforcing existing power dynamics in the economy.
In partnership with Data & Society, this residency seeks bold ideas for how to shape, redirect, interrupt, and/or make more visible and contestable the flows of capital to generative AI. What policy levers are available to ensure that private investments drive a diversified AI sector and a deconcentrated economy that serves all Americans, rather than one that herds on a narrow set of speculative tech experiments? How can we ensure that investors don’t neglect other sectors critical to the economy? What market-shaping tools can the government deploy to ensure that generative AI develops safely and protects workers’ rights?
Specific topics might include:
- What government interventions should be considered to enhance public oversight, risk allocation, and direction-setting in private markets, such as the AI sector?
- If AI spending is crowding out other investments in the economy, what can be done to coordinate and scale other investments to pursue both technological innovation and a resilient economy?
- What role can public spending play, whether through existing government channels or through new institutions altogether, to catalyze new forms of technology R&D that are better designed or managed to support workers, enhance sustainability, and strengthen supply chains?
- What institutional forms of democratic input are needed to ensure that state influence over capital flows is less vulnerable to corruption and pursued in line with democratic values?
- How should federal AI policy address increasingly intense public hostility to data center investments while also accounting for national security and international competitiveness?
Note: Successful candidates will have demonstrated expertise in AI, technology, industrial policy, and/or a related subject area. They have at least five years of professional or scholastic policy experience.