Sara Menker

Sara Menker is an Entrepreneur and the CEO of Gro Intelligence[1]. She is a trustee of the Mandela Institute for Development Studies and was elected one of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders.

Sara Menker
Menker in 2017
Born
Ethiopia
Alma materMount Holyoke College
Columbia University
OccupationEntrepreneur
EmployerGro Intelligence
AwardsYoung Global Leaders

Early life and education

Menker was born and raised in Ethiopia.[2] She studied Economics and African Studies at Mount Holyoke College.[3] She moved to the London School of Economics[4] for her graduate studies, and eventually earned an Master of Business Administration at Columbia University.[3]

Career

Menker is a former commodities group Vice President at Morgan Stanley.[5] During her time at Morgan Stanley, Menker became interested in farmland investments.[6] She left her job in Wall Street to use her skills in data analytics for social good.[7]

She became concerned by threat of a global food crisis, and started to investigate how Africa could mitigate the Earth's growing demands for food.[8] She estimated that by 2030 food shortages could be as significant as the financial crisis or dot-com bubble crash.[6] Menker predicts that the world could face a 214 trillion calorie deficit.[9] In 2014 Menker established Gro Intelligence, a data-driven platform which connects food market around the world.[6][10][11] Gro Intelligence includes information such as the cost of avocado exports from Mexico and popular coffee beans, and uses artificial intelligence to make predictions about trends in food prices.[2][6] Gro Intelligence offer software that makes agricultural, weather and climate data easy to understand. The data is combined with satellite imagery and creates over 1,000 models a day.[12] She has used Gro Intelligence to investigate the impact of natural disasters, including droughts, on food supply.[13] The reports inform companies on what and where to sell products, as well as supporting policy makers and insurance companies.[13]

In 2017 Menker delivered a TED talk A global food crisis may be less than a decade away, which has been watched over 1.5 million times.[14] In 2018 Menker was named the Henry C. Gardiner Global Food Systems Lecturer.[15][16] She has presented at the Rockefeller Foundation, X and The New York Times.[17][18][19]

Menker is a trustee of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture and the Mandela Institute for Development Studies. She was selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014.[20] She is also a member of The Aspen Institute African Leadership Initiative.[5] Menker is involved with Cognition X, the artificial intelligence information platform.[21]

gollark: False.
gollark: How America.
gollark: Bottled water is heretical heresy in places where tap water works, which is at least 3.
gollark: The modded server actually uses an Alpine instance I bootstrapped on there via an incredibly accursed process, for efficiency, but close enough.
gollark: They have some documentation here: https://blogs.oracle.com/developers/post/how-to-set-up-and-run-a-really-powerful-free-minecraft-server-in-the-cloud

References
  1. "Gro Intelligence: Team". gro-intelligence.com. Retrieved 2019-09-30.
  2. Wells, Peter (2019-03-14). "Gro Intelligence looks to reap rewards from crop data". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  3. "Sara Menker". OKAYAFRICA's 100 WOMEN. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  4. "Milken Institute Summit - London 2013 - Speaker: Sara Menker". www.milkeninstitute.org. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  5. Forum, the World Economic; Economics, is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative of the Aspen Institute Sara received a B. A. in; College, African Studies at Mount Holyoke; Economics, the London School of; Menker, an M. B. A. from Columbia University Sessions Keynote with Sara Menker Sara MenkerSara; CEO; Intelligence, Gro. "Speaker: Sara Menker: Data science + business analytics training: Strata Data Conference". conferences.oreilly.com. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  6. Bendix, Aria. "This entrepreneur left Wall Street to count the world's calories. Now she's warning of a global food disaster equal to the financial crisis". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  7. Mohammed, Omar. "Reliable data is the answer to Africa's $1 trillion agriculture opportunity". Quartz Africa. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  8. "Sara Menker: How Can We Farm Enough Food to Feed the World?". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  9. "A 214-Trillion-Calorie Deficit: Global Food Demand Will Surpass Supply". AgWeb - The Home Page of Agriculture. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  10. "Big Data". www.selamtamagazine.com. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  11. "Big Data". www.selamtamagazine.com. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  12. Paynter, Ben (2019-05-22). "Meet the Ethiopia-born Morgan Stanley vet who's using AI and data to revolutionize agricultural trading". Fast Company. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  13. Affairs, Chicago Council on Global (2016-04-28). "Guest Commentary – Gro Intelligence: Deciphering a Drought with Data". Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  14. Menker, Sara, A global food crisis may be less than a decade away, retrieved 2019-06-11
  15. "Menker named fifth speaker in Henry C. Gardiner Global Food Systems Lecture series". www.k-state.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  16. K-State (2018-10-11), Sara Menker | Henry C. Gardiner Global Food Systems Lecture, retrieved 2019-06-11
  17. X, the moonshot factory (2014-06-27), Google I/O 2014: Sara Menker - making food cheap and abundant globally, retrieved 2019-06-11
  18. The Rockefeller Foundation (2018-10-18), Sara Menker in Conversation With Raj Shah | Changemakers Series, retrieved 2019-06-11
  19. The New York Times Conferences (2019-03-06), Harvesting Data, retrieved 2019-06-11
  20. "Sara Menker". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  21. "Sara Menker". CogX 2019. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
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