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

Sara Menker is an Entrepreneur and the CEO of Gro Intelligence, a company that uses artificial intelligence to forecast agricultural and climate trends.[1] She is a trustee of the Mandela Institute for Development Studies and was elected one of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders.

Early life

Menker grew up in Ethiopia.[2] Her parents were middle class and she attended a private school in Addis Ababa.[2] In her time in Ethiopia, she was exposed to the effects of poverty and famine.

Education

During her highschool career, she met an admissions officer from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts,[2] which she ultimately decided to attend. There, she got her degree in Economics and African Studies.[3] She later attended the London School of Economics for graduate studies and received her master's degree at Columbia University.[4]

Career

Menker started her career in commodities risk management at Morgan Stanley.[5] She eventually moved through Morgan Stanley to portfolio trading and management.[5] Throughout her work at Morgan Stanley, the issue of food insecurity was constantly on her mind. During her time there, Menker became interested in farmland investments.[3] She left her job in Wall Street in 2014 to use her skills in data analytics for social good.[6] So, she founded Gro Intelligence, a company that leverages artificial intelligence to forecast agricultural trends.[1]

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.[7] She estimated that by 2030 food shortages could be as significant as the financial crisis or dot-com bubble crash.[3] Menker predicts that the world could face a 214 trillion calorie deficit.[8] This is due to systemic issues in the food supply chain, as well as a general increase in population.[2] In 2014 Menker established Gro Intelligence, a data-driven platform which connects food market around the world.[3][9][10] 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.[11][3] Gro Intelligence offer software that attempts to make 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][4] 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.[21] Menker is involved with Cognition X, the artificial intelligence information platform.[22] In 2021, she was included in the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[23] In 2021, Menker was selected as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst.[24]

References

  1. 1 2 "Gro Intelligence: Team". gro-intelligence.com. Retrieved 2019-09-30.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Gelles, David (2022-01-07). "'I Know What the End of the World Looks Like'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-12-06.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 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.
  4. 1 2 "Sara Menker, Gro Intelligence Inc: Profile and Biography". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2022-12-06.
  5. 1 2 "Sara Menker Biography | Booking Info for Speaking Engagements". www.allamericanspeakers.com. Retrieved 2022-12-06.
  6. ↑ Mohammed, Omar. "Reliable data is the answer to Africa's $1 trillion agriculture opportunity". Quartz Africa. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  7. ↑ "Sara Menker: How Can We Farm Enough Food to Feed the World?". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  8. ↑ "A 214-Trillion-Calorie Deficit: Global Food Demand Will Surpass Supply". AgWeb - The Home Page of Agriculture. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  9. ↑ "Big Data". www.selamtamagazine.com. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  10. ↑ "Big Data". www.selamtamagazine.com. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2019-06-12.
  11. ↑ Wells, Peter (2019-03-14). "Gro Intelligence looks to reap rewards from crop data". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  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. 1 2 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. ↑ 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.
  22. ↑ "Sara Menker". CogX 2019. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
  23. ↑ Williams, Chad (September 16, 2021). "Africans who made TIME's 100 Most Influential People 2021". Independent Online. Retrieved November 15, 2021.
  24. ↑ "The Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst List". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
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