‘I Know What the End of the World Looks Like’
The New York Times
The Ethiopian entrepreneur Sara Menker founded Gro Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence to forecast global agricultural trends and battle food insecurity.
Growing up in Ethiopia during the 1980s, Sara Menker was exposed to the extremes of privilege and poverty. While her parents were middle class and she attended an excellent private school in the capital city of Addis Ababa, many of her countrymen suffered from famine and civil unrest.
After meeting an admissions officer from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts when she was in high school, Ms. Menker wound up attending the small liberal arts school for women. From there, she joined Morgan Stanley in New York, where she began trading commodities.
But she never stopped thinking about food insecurity. While on Wall Street, Ms. Menker became captivated by the global food system and its inefficiencies. In 2014 she quit and founded Gro Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence to forecast agricultural trends.
