Corporations increasingly leverage data to dissect potential markets and target relevant consumers. How can the social sector apply this methodology for widespread systems change? Social entrepreneurs increasingly think about how to ask the right questions, use answers effectively, and capitalize on existing systems to maximize the impact of data—without breaking the bank. We’ll hear from social entrepreneurs whose core innovations rely on data. We’ll see how they use data to change the sectors in which they work, facilitate collaboration, and the challenges they face along the way.
Jessi Baker is the founder of provenance.org. Provenance is a digital platform enabling producers, manufacturers and retailers to track the journey of people, places and ingredients behind their products. They use blockchain and smart tagging technologies to revolutionise supply chain transparency. With Provenance businesses can drastically reduce risk in their supply chain and foster a new form of consumer trust.
The first to apply blockchain technology to supply chain in 2013, Provenance are now working with businesses in the UK and across global supply chains, including The Co-op supermarket, organic certified farms across Europe and luxury brands in the fashion and food industries. They are a member of the Ellen MacArthur foundation CE100 - pioneering open traceability systems for a circular economy, and were featured in over 30 news titles in 2016.
Jessi has a Master’s in Engineering (Cambridge University) and Design (Royal College of Art), she founded Provenance whilst doing a PhD in Computer Science (UCL). Across the US and Europe, she has worked with brands on technology and digital design strategy including Adidas, The Four Seasons, The Guggenheim, pop star Will.I.Am, British Airways and Louis Vuitton. She is an associate researcher at the Intel Institute for Sustainable Cities.
Ania has recently taken on the role of Executive Director at the Open Data Charter. For the past three years, she led the National Open Data Policy in Mexico, delivering a key presidential mandate. She established capacity building programs across more than 200 public institutions, developed tools and platforms to enable the release of standardised data, built channels to increase the ability of citizens to inform data release and started a national open data network of over 40 cities working to improve service delivery.
Ania created programs with multiple sectors to increase the use of data to reduce maternal mortality and increase financial inclusion in Mexico’s largest social development program, enhance resilience against natural disasters and launched a Datalab fellowship program to improve evidence based policymaking. She worked to strengthen open data commitments globally, such as with the G20, Anti-corruption Summit and multiple regional and bilateral declarations.
This work helped position Mexico as an open data leader in Latin America and New Challenger, according to the Open Data Barometer. Ania holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Columbia University and has prior experience as founder and director of a non-profit organisation that focused on promoting citizen engagement in shaping Mexico City’s public agenda.
Jake Porway is a machine learning and technology enthusiast who loves nothing more than seeing good values in data. He is the founder and executive director of DataKind, an organization that brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations to better collect, analyze, and visualize data in the service of humanity. Jake was most recently the data scientist in the New York Times R&D lab and remains an active member of the data science community, bringing his technical experience from his past work with groups like NASA, DARPA, Google, and Bell Labs to bear on the social sector. Jake’s work has been featured in leading academic journals and conferences (PAMI, ICCV), the Guardian, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He has been honored as a 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow and a 2012 National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics from UCLA.
Ma Jun began his career in 1993 working for the South China Morning Post, where his research on China’s environmental problems spurred him to publish the 1999 book China’s Water Crisis. In 2004 he was selected as a Yale World Fellow. Upon returning to China, Ma Jun founded the non-profit organization the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) in Beijing in 2006.
As Director of IPE, Ma Jun led the development and launch of China’s first environmental public database, the Blue Map, with website and mobile app platforms. The Blue Map collects air, water and soil quality data from across the country, as well as pollution source information that provides a foundation for green credit and green finance systems. The Green Choice supply chain program he and colleagues initiated has motivated more than 3000 suppliers of major global and local brands to openly address their violation problems.
In 2006, he was awarded as China’s “Green Person of the Year” and was named as one of TIME Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People. Ma was also honored with the Magsaysay Award in 2009 and Goldman Prize in 2012 for his environmental protection work in China, as well as the 2015 Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship for his innovative approach to “lifting the veil” on China’s pollution problems.
Founder & CEO at Kamara Global Group / President at Videre Est Credere, Kamara Global Group
Our most significant contribution in life is the impact we create. Being at the forefront of change, especially where social mission is the driving force, creates specific risks and challenges for various actors: from local communities, grassroots organisations, NGOs and donors through to pioneering socially conscious companies or individuals and impact investors.
During my 20 years of experience as a social entrepreneur in high stakes contexts, the importance of harnessing knowledge and building resilience as ingredients of success in achieving change became evident. I created Kamara, a social enterprise that offer Holistic Strategies for Social Impact to help social change makers enhance their impact in an effective way by leveraging our expertise in holistic risk management, intelligent operational strategies and investigations.
Prior to Kamara, in 2008 I co-founded Videre Est Credere, an NGO with ground-breaking investigative and strategic methodologies used to expose human rights abuses and precipitate change in high risk territories.
Oren is an Ashoka Fellow, recipient of a Skoll Award and One Media Award, and is Ted Global speaker.
Senior Director, Human Rights, Education, and Empowerment Group, Winrock International
Sarah Jakiel, Winrock’s Senior Director of Human Rights, Education & Empowerment, has been on the cutting edge of counter-human trafficking efforts for more than a decade. In her most recent role, as chief program officer at Polaris, she led program development, set organization-wide strategy and supported the organization’s commitment to innovation and impact. Jakiel started with Polaris in 2007, launching and directing the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which serves as a critical national resource focused on victim identification. She led Polaris’s international expansion beginning in 2012 and focused on targeted capacity-building efforts and the launch of national hotline hubs in the U.K., Mexico and Canada. She launched Polaris’s Data Analysis wing to learn more about the scope, size and systems of modern slavery and to find out where and how human traffickers operate and put them out of business. Recent efforts included the development and launch of a human trafficking typology that identified more than 25 types of human trafficking in the U.S. and laid out a systematic blueprint to tackle and disrupt each type. Jakiel holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia in political science and French and an M.A. in Human Rights and Social Justice from American University. She spent several years living and working abroad in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
