Max Salmon

Citizen Engagement Lead, ControlAI.
London · 2025 – present
—Built the entire public outreach pipeline from scratch — strategy, creative, messaging, CRM and advocacy tooling — with no existing infrastructure and no technical direction above me.
—Designed and priced the full funnel, from first ad impression to constituents meeting their own representatives, so budget could move to whichever stage was binding.
—Acquired 352,592 people at a blended £1.58 each — £3.72 per retained email, £12.42 per activated individual, and £2.79 per message delivered to a lawmaker; 25 UK MPs signed on.
—Ran 101 Meta campaigns: 31.7M impressions, £14.24 CPM, £1.50 CPL in the UK and $1.85 in the US.
—£560,000 of paid media allocated across Meta, Google, TikTok and Civic Shout; the UK infrastructure was then redeployed in the US, Germany and Canada.
—Led a lean team of three across engineering, creative and community — hiring, management and budget as well as direction.
Research Fellow, The New Zealand Initiative.
Wellington · 2023 – 2024
—Argued in Cabinet Congestion that ministerial portfolios had outpaced the state's capacity to coordinate them, and set out a leaner executive structure; briefed it to ministers and officials directly.
—Self-directed research on the organisation of government, electoral reform and local government efficiency, published in leading national newspapers.
—Presented to business leaders, politicians and officials; peer-reviewed colleagues' work across education, pharmaceutical and academic-freedom reform.
Advisor, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Wellington · 2022 · COVID-19 Response Team
—Coordinated justice, health and my own department, holding advisors and their managers to deadlines for material going to the responsible Minister.
—Ran quality assurance on public releases from Prime Minister Ardern and other Ministers, and on briefings for senior leadership as policy shifted.
Researcher, New Zealand Taxpayers' Union.
Wellington · 2021 – 2022
—Built and ran policy engagement campaigns on fiscal responsibility and local government, from planning to release.
—Led research on public spending and water infrastructure funding; authored press releases and papers.
Competencies
Allocation. Cost-per-outcome modelling, budget reallocation under uncertainty, and killing underperforming bets early.
Measurement. Metric design, tracking infrastructure, polling and experiment design.
Policy. Research and authorship, parliamentary process, briefing and media relations.

Eudaimonist. Interested in AI going well, bioethics, genre fiction, growth, and projects creating a cooler future more generally.

Currently running the world's largest digital campaign mobilising the public on AI extinction risk. Previously policy research, government, and advocacy.

maxsalmon1999@gmail.com +44 7442 611 100
London, United Kingdom.
References on request
Lovecraft for Ants* Missing the point You Look Lonely, I Can Fix That Anarchy, Pragmatism and Utopia Don't Hate the Player Hollow men
Antipodean Thoughts ↗
A Day's Work.
Write out your week in plain language, give each task a time, and it lays out your days from those plans and your Google Calendar. A pop-out timer and proper time-tracking keep you honest about where the hours actually go. The most useful thing I've had Claude build me.
Download ↗ GitHub ↗
D&D Session Manager.
For the DM: a queryable version of your whole campaign, the usual virtual-tabletop utilities, and a few extras like a built-in LLM assistant. For players: the simplest, tidiest interface D&D has ever had. The two sides are linked, with tools for importing old characters and carrying them across campaigns. Still being finished, but very nearly there.
GitHub ↗
Misc reading covering no particular time point. Updated infrequently.
40 volumes · grouped by rating The shelf ↗