Seeing Around Corners

Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker uses data to predict the futureand help combat food insecurity.

- YASMIN GAGNE

"Food shortage and climate change are already a problem," says Sara Menker, and they're "about to get worse." As the founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, which combines agricultural and climate data with AI and machine learning to create models that predict the future of global food security, Menker understands, on a granular level, the scope of the problem. And she's giving others the tools to solve it. Her eight-year-old company helps clients-government agencies, humanitarian organizations, banks like BNP Paribas, and conglomerates like Unilever and Yum Brands-"see around the corner and plan accordingly." In May, Menker testified before the United Nations Security Council about the impact of such unprecedented factors as global conflict on food security, noting that 400 million people had lost reliable access to affordable, nutritious food in the first five months of 2022, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Menker, who grew up in Ethiopia at a time when the country experienced food shortages, attended college in the U.S. and weathered the 2008 financial crisis as a commodities trader at Morgan Stanley. She has managed to build a business on her ability to withstand the worst and plan for it. This is how she predicts the future and persuades companies and governments to take action.

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