Database Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2011, Porway founded DataKind to connect data-rich mission-driven organiza-
tions with teams of data scientists willing to donate their time and knowledge to
solve social, environmental, and community problems. DataKind has been widely fea-
tured in such publications as
WIRED
,
The Economist, Forbes
,
The Washington
Post,
and
Harvard Business Review
. Porway holds a BS in Computer Science from
Columbia University and a MS and PhD in Statistics from UCLA. He is the host of
The Numbers Game
, a National Geographic Channel television show focused on
raising data literacy levels.
Porway personifies the data scientist who believes in the power of data to change
the world and wants to ensure that this change benefits humanity. This ideal shines
through as he talks about his motivation for founding DataKind, his reasons for mak-
ing the organization a nonprofit, and his vision for creating a movement that helps
the world become a place where data is both better understood and better deployed
for social gains as small as improving the lot of a single family and as large as helping
millions of subsistence farmers in Africa. Porway's passion for using data science to
help others is consuming and contagious, compelling anyone who is data-driven to
reassess where to apply their energy and skills.
Sebastian Gutierrez:
Tell me about where you work.
Jake Porway:
I am the founder and executive director of DataKind, a non-
profit dedicated to tackling the world's biggest problems through data science.
We bring together high-impact organizations dedicated to solving the world's
toughest challenges, with leading data scientists to improve the quality of,
access to, and understanding of data in the social sector.
We live in exciting times. A friend of mine put it to me like this: just like in
the 1990s, when every field had its computing moment, today everyone's hav-
ing their data moment. It's not just data and tech companies that can benefit
from data now. Everyone is benefiting in some way, because of the ubiquity of
cellphones, laptops, and other digital interfaces that collect and transmit data.
Not to mention emerging device sensors and many other things. Even organi-
zations that are not traditionally data companies are suddenly inundated with
data that they can use to make better decisions.
I'm really excited because we at DataKind focus on applications of data sci-
ence to make the world a better place. So using the same technologies that
help Netflix recommend movies you want to watch, we apply similar tech-
niques to problems, like sourcing clean water, combating human rights viola-
tions, or addressing other pressing social issues. It really feels like a brave new
world, and the chance to use data science skills to do something good at this
time is just incredibly rewarding.
Gutierrez:
Tell me about your team and the organization.
Porway:
We're eight people now but on track to double our staff. We also
have volunteer-led chapters in six cities around the world—Bangalore, Dublin,
San Francisco, Singapore, the UK, and Washington DC. One of the ways that
