MAX HENDERSON

Behavioral Archetype

THE ADVISER-FOUNDER WITH A SEAT ON EACH RELATED BOARD — Subject is the founder-CEO of a philanthropic adviser whose own tax return lists, as related tax-exempt organizations, the incubator, the AI-policy sponsor and the biosecurity fund around the evaluator layer, and who sits on the board of each of them and of AVERI, the evaluator that several of them fund. He is a former technology executive (Google Cloud, McKesson, Oracle), the founder of the pandemic-data nonprofit CovidActNow, and, in his AVERI biography’s words, someone who “has helped incubate, operate, and fund close to $1B of social good efforts across causes such as global health, science, nuclear security, and AI.” The hazard is not a gate. He approves no model, runs no evaluation and writes no standard. It is that one set of names recurs on the boards of the money, the sponsor and the evaluator, in public filings, and that the adviser’s own return lists the first three as related. This profile scores the position, not the person.

Essence Indicators

• Co-founder and CEO, Ergo Impact. Ergo’s page lists “Max Henderson” as “CO-FOUNDER, CEO” and says: “Max is a founder who built his career in senior product and GTM roles at Google Cloud, McKesson, and Oracle, before founding CovidActNow. He holds a degree in Applied Economics from Cornell and has invested in and advised companies across climate, health, and technology.” It describes itself: “We find, fund, and scale the most promising people and solutions to the world’s most pressing problems,” and “Ergo provides the world’s most ambitious philanthropists with a new way of deploying capital impactfully at scale.” (Ergo Impact). See Kellie Liket, its co-founder and President.

• What Ergo’s own return says. Ergo Impact Inc (EIN 99-2339731, San Francisco, exemption issued July 2024) states its mission on its TY2025 Form 990: “ERGO IMPACT’S MISSION IS TO SUPPORT SOLUTIONS TO LARGE, GLOBAL PROBLEMS AND PROMOTE THE SAFE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, EMERGING BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN OUR SOCIETY.” The return gives revenue of $3,731,127, all of it contributions, expenses of $1,455,723, and $10,000 of grants to domestic organizations. It names him principal officer and lists him as Chief Executive Officer at 40 hours a week with $676,000 reportable compensation and $21,148 other; Kellie Liket as President at 40 hours, $325,653 and $4,614; Nancy De Ruiter as Director at one hour, $0; and David Teter as Chief Operating Officer to May 2025. Schedule O: “COMPENSATION FOR THE ORGANIZATION’S OFFICERS, INCLUDING THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, WAS DETERMINED THROUGH A PROFESSIONAL COMPENSATION STUDY OBTAINED BY THE ORGANIZATION.” The FY2024 return shows $1,858,577 of contributions and lists him as CEO at $245,130 (ProPublica, Ergo Impact TY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, Ergo Impact Schedule O; ProPublica, Ergo Impact Inc).

• The related organizations on Ergo’s Schedule R. Part II lists four related tax-exempt organizations: Fathom AI (EIN 93-4840479, “AI SAFETY EDUCATION AND AWARENESS”), Halcyon Futures (93-3537739, “LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AND CHARITABLE INCUBATION”), Sentinel Bio (99-3068480, “BIOTECHNOLOGY SAFETY AND AWARENESS”) and Seismic Catalyst Foundation (33-3325360, “AI SAFETY EDUCATION AND AWARENESS”). Part V answers “No” to a gift, grant or capital contribution to a related organization (ProPublica, Ergo Impact Schedule R). See Fathom, Halcyon Futures and Sentinel Bio.

• Venture Partner, Halcyon Futures; Secretary of Halcyon Futures Inc. Halcyon’s about page lists him as “Venture Partner”: “Max is the Co-founder and CEO of Ergo Impact. Previously he was a product and sales leader at Google Cloud, McKesson, and Oracle, before founding CovidActNow. Max serves on several boards across AI safety and biosecurity.” Halcyon Futures Inc’s FY2024 return lists “Max Henderson (Secretary)” and “Kellie Liket (Director)” at $0 and one hour a week each, beside Chief Executive Officer Michael Mccormick at $283,181 reportable compensation; its FY2023 return lists him as “Secretary & Treasurer” at $0 (Halcyon Futures, About; ProPublica, Halcyon Futures Inc FY2024 Form 990; ProPublica, Halcyon Futures Inc). See Mike McCormick.

• Board member, AVERI. AVERI’s team page lists him under “Board”: “Max is a board member at AVERI and the founder of Ergo Impact. A philanthropist and investor, Max has helped incubate, operate, and fund close to $1B of social good efforts across causes such as global health, science, nuclear security, and AI. Prior to his philanthropy work, Max was a tech founder and executive, having held product and GTM roles at CovidActNow, Firebase, Google, Oracle, Compass, etc.” AVERI’s about page names its funders: “the AI Underwriting Company, Coefficient Giving, Craig Falls, Geoff Ralston, Good Forever Foundation, Fathom, Halcyon Futures, Sympatico Ventures.” It also says it requires “all employees, board members, and contractors to disclose potential conflicts of interest” and “public disclosure of the most significant conflicts on our website”; his team-page entry prints his Ergo role and no conflict statement (AVERI, Team; AVERI, About). See AVERI.

• Board Member, Fathom AI Inc. Fathom’s FY2024 return summary lists “Max Henderson (Board Member)” and “Kellie Liket (Board Member)” at $0, beside co-founders Andrew Freedman, Bri Treece and Blake Pierson. Fathom says it is “an independent nonprofit whose mission is to build a global architecture that helps society navigate the transition to a world with AI by fostering trust, safety, and innovation.” (ProPublica, Fathom AI Inc; Fathom, About)

• Treasurer of Sentinel Bio, and a named supporter. Sentinel Bio’s FY2024 return lists “Max Henderson” as Treasurer and Dr Kellie Liket as Secretary, five hours a week each, $0; contributions on the return are $10,582,992. Sentinel’s people page lists him on its Board of Directors: “Max Henderson is the CEO at Ergo Impact. He has held leadership positions in technology and healthcare Google, Oracle, and McKesson, and was the co-founder and CEO of CovidActNow.” Its organization page: “Our current supporters include Adam Winkel, the AI Safety Tactical Opportunities Fund, Alpha Epsilon, Brian Chen, the Bushnell-Kessel Charitable Fund, the Casey & Family Foundation, Craig Falls, Cullen O’Keefe, the Kwan family, the Larch Fund, Max Henderson,” and others, and “No donor makes up over 25% of our funding.” (ProPublica, Sentinel Bio FY2024 Form 990; Sentinel Bio, People; Sentinel Bio, Organization)

• A fifth return carries a name variant. Seismic Catalyst Foundation (EIN 33-3325360, Delaware, exemption August 2025; a related organization on Ergo’s Schedule R) lists on its FY2025 return “Michael Mccormick (Director),” “Maximillian Henderson (Director)” and “Kellie Liket (Secretary),” each at $0 (ProPublica, Seismic Catalyst Foundation).

• CovidActNow, in his words (4 August 2020). On Eric Ries’s podcast he says: “Hey, my name is Max Henderson and I’m the CEO and founder of Covid Act Now.” On why the group advocated: “from the very beginning, our goal has always been to, one, be extremely clear, two, be extremely action-oriented, and three, be additive.” On his role: “the only reason I even care about the role we play is purely just to make sure that we are adding to the signal and not adding to the noise.” Ries, the host, says in the same episode: “Quick shout out to Dustin Moskovitz who underwrote the cost of the Resistbot campaign at a critical time.” Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security lists him as “Co-Founder and Board President of CovidActNow” (Eric Ries, Out of the Crisis #17, 4 Aug 2020; Georgetown GHSS, Max Henderson). See Dustin Moskovitz.

• Social accounts: none verified. Halcyon’s about page links his LinkedIn only; Ergo’s page and Sentinel’s page link no personal account. LinkedIn is not used as a source. No X handle is added.

Social Persona / Impression Management

Immediate impression: The operator-turned-adviser. A product and go-to-market executive who built a pandemic-data nonprofit in 2020 and now runs a philanthropic adviser that places him on the boards around it. The public footprint is a team-page entry at each organization, four IRS returns, and one 2020 podcast.

Energy: Seat-holder rather than speaker. The record contains no op-ed, talk or social post under his name after 2020. His appearances are filings and bios, each at one to five hours a week and $0 except at the organization he runs.

Impression management strategy: Action, clarity, additivity, in his own frame: “be extremely clear,” “be extremely action-oriented,” “be additive” (Out of the Crisis #17). Halcyon’s page compresses the present version: “Max serves on several boards across AI safety and biosecurity” (Halcyon Futures).

First-hand exhibits. The 2020 transcript is the only extended first-person record read; nothing under his name on AI evaluation, audits or licensing is quoted.

Forensic Archetype Comparison

Psychometric Assessment

Trait scores are observations of the documented public role, not claims about private character.

Big Five (OCEAN) (inferred from the public role and public record only):

Dark Triad (evidence-bound):

MBTI: ENTJ-adjacent (“The Commander”), inferred from the documented public role only. The rationale is the work product: a founder-CEO who builds organizations and seats on them, in a bio that leads with companies and roles. First-hand rationale: “Max is a founder who built his career in senior product and GTM roles” (Ergo Impact). A style inference, not a test result.

Threat Assessment

Score rationale. The receipts: AVERI’s team and about pages, Ergo’s page and its TY2025 return with Schedules O and R, Halcyon’s about page and FY2024 return, Fathom’s and Sentinel Bio’s returns and Sentinel’s people and organization pages. Attack 5, defense 5, durability 4, hazard 46.7. Peers: Mike McCormick (5/5/4, hazard 46.7), the CEO of the incubator whose Venture Partner Henderson is: the same two-sided leverage of funding plus seats, the same donor dependence, the same age of institutions; McCormick sits on two evaluators’ boards where Henderson sits on one evaluator’s board, the sponsor’s and the biosecurity fund’s, and neither has a release gate, so they net level. Kyle Scott (4/4/3, hazard 36.7), the officer on three evaluators’ books: a point below on each, because Scott holds fiduciary offices at the evaluators themselves while Henderson’s seats span the evaluator, the sponsor, the incubator and the biosecurity fund and include the adviser he founded, which lists three of them as related. Sawyer Bernath (3/4/3, hazard 33.3), an unpaid director on two evaluators’ boards, below on attack and durability. Attack 5 is the number most open to challenge: the filings document seats and a related-organization listing, not any decision resting on them.

Score basis. ATK 5 is leverage: governance seats at AVERI, Fathom, Halcyon Futures Inc and Sentinel Bio plus a named supporter line at the last, with no gate (AVERI, Team; Sentinel Bio, Organization). DEF 5 is insulation: paid $676,000 by an organization funded entirely by contributions, $0 elsewhere, no tenure (ProPublica, Ergo Impact TY2025 Form 990). HP 4 is durability: organizations under three years old on the IRS record, with seats that pass to successors (ProPublica, Ergo Impact Inc).

Alignment Analysis

Stated alignment: Deploy philanthropic capital at scale on problems markets and governments leave behind. Ergo: “We find, fund, and scale the most promising people and solutions to the world’s most pressing problems” (Ergo Impact). Observed alignment: Consistent. The return’s mission names the safe use of AI and emerging biological technology, and the organizations that his seats and his return connect are an incubator, an AI-policy sponsor, an AI evaluator and a biosecurity fund (ProPublica, Ergo Impact TY2025 Form 990; AVERI, Team). Gap assessment: None documented. What the record cannot settle is how the related-organization relationship on Ergo’s Schedule R is defined, who funds Ergo (the public rendering names no donor), and whether the name variant on the Seismic Catalyst return is the same person.

Interest: Documented, never motive, never a verdict. He has published no policy argument in the record read after 2020; the positions below are the ones the organizations he sits on carry.

1. Position: frontier AI developers should be audited by independent third parties with access to non-public information (AVERI: “Our mission is to make frontier AI auditing effective and universal,” AVERI, About). What adoption pays: a mandatory-audit market is the market AVERI exists to build and that two of its named funders, Fathom and Halcyon Futures, both listed as related organizations on Ergo’s return, are also in; he sits on all three boards. No fee, grant or contract value for him is published. Best case: AVERI’s: the needed access is “access that developers aren’t currently required to provide.” Others who gain: the evaluators, certifiers and insurers that audits create work for.
2. Position: emerging biological technology needs a dedicated safety and awareness funder (Ergo’s return: its mission includes “PROMOTE THE SAFE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, EMERGING BIOLOGICAL TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN OUR SOCIETY”). What adoption pays: Sentinel Bio is the fund that carries it, he is its Treasurer and a named supporter, and Ergo lists it as related (Sentinel Bio, Organization). Best case: the pandemic work he led in 2020 is the case study: “the cognitive load of just understanding what the heck is going on and where we stand and what’s coming next is extremely, extremely difficult.” Others who gain: the biosecurity evaluators Sentinel funds, SecureBio among them.

Alliance Map

The Corporate and Movement rows overlap in names and in time. The incubator, the AI-policy sponsor, the biosecurity fund and the evaluator they fund sit on one adviser’s related-organization list and, in the filings, one name sits on their boards. The overlap is the finding, in the open and on the record. See the small world.

Convergent Drive Classification

Self-preservation: Spreads seats across organizations that are each under three years old, so no single return carries him. First-hand: “Max serves on several boards across AI safety and biosecurity” (Halcyon Futures). Goal preservation: Keeps one object, philanthropic capital aimed at AI and biological risk, in several legal forms. First-hand: “ERGO IMPACT’S MISSION IS TO SUPPORT SOLUTIONS TO LARGE, GLOBAL PROBLEMS” (ProPublica, Ergo TY2025). Resource acquisition: Ergo’s revenue rose from $1,858,577 to $3,731,127 between FY2024 and FY2025, and his reportable compensation from $245,130 to $676,000 (ProPublica, Ergo Impact Inc). A donor list for Ergo is on no page read. Self-improvement: From enterprise product roles to a pandemic data nonprofit to a philanthropic adviser. First-hand: “before founding CovidActNow” (Ergo Impact).

Subject is not an AI system. The drives appear anyway — in the adviser whose name is on the board of each related organization.

Public footprint: Ergo Impact · AVERI team · Halcyon Futures.

Sources: AVERI, Team; AVERI, About; Ergo Impact; ProPublica, Ergo Impact TY2025 Form 990; ProPublica, Ergo Impact Schedule R; ProPublica, Ergo Impact Schedule O; ProPublica, Ergo Impact Inc; Halcyon Futures, About; ProPublica, Halcyon Futures Inc FY2024 Form 990; ProPublica, Halcyon Futures Inc; ProPublica, Fathom AI Inc; Fathom, About; ProPublica, Sentinel Bio FY2024 Form 990; Sentinel Bio, People; Sentinel Bio, Organization; ProPublica, Seismic Catalyst Foundation; Out of the Crisis #17, Eric Ries; Georgetown GHSS, Max Henderson.