Sara Menker

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.

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]

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]