benwikler

"he tried to change everything around him - everything but himself."

Read his last big piece of writing: the series Raw Nerve, which he called "a series of pieces about getting better at life." He was trying to change himself. And he was making headway. And then not.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve

Great that they're probing the reasons for going after him--including whether his advocacy background was a factor, and why the superseding indictment--when they upped the felony count from 4 to 13 a year after the first indictment--was necessary.

One thing I love about GiveWell is that they publicize and learn from their mistakes, this one included. http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings They're really, really good people. Like everyone, they did something dumb. Unlike most, they learned from it and spend their lives trying to improve the world.

As a close friend of Aaron's who was on the email chain between ThoughtWorks and his family about this statement, I can tell you that marketing played no role in this. There is intense, genuine, sadness and anger there about what happened, from the top down. Having "About ThoughtWorks" on the page is an oversight if anything. A team of engineers has been working through the night to build http://rememberaaronsw.com, which is a beautiful tribute to him--even the _content_ is open-source, kept in a github repo rather than a proprietary database. And TW was very concerned to support the family's wishes. I'm proud of them.