Core77 is excited to announce our very first submission for SXSW, a panel titled "Harnessing Data to Reach Your Social Impact Goals" in partnership with multidisciplinary engineering consultancy MistyWest. The talk is currently open for voting in SXSW's PanelPicker system until Friday November 20, which is part of a two-tier process that allows conference attendees to have a say in this SXSW's 2021 programming.

Vote for "Harnessing Data to Reach Your Social Impact Goals" on SXSW's PanelPicker platform here

Panel Topic

While it's true technology today is responsible for much gloom and doom, it may also be our only hope for reversing industrialization's effects on climate change and creating more equitable futures globally. For this panel, we'll be chatting with design professionals at leading organizations such as Google and Microsoft who are working on teams using data to fight future disease outbreaks and help build more resilient, productive food systems.

What can be learned from their findings about the power data has to affect change? How can you implement the use of data within your own company or practice to successfully contribute to social good? This panel will answer these questions of how data can speed up research and optimize observations in order to tackle urgent social impact issues.

Panel Participants

This panel will be joined by Oleha Riden, Principal of MistyWest, Emily Ma, Project Lead at X (formerly Google X), Dr. Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft, and will be moderated by Allison Fonder, Senior Producer of Core77.

Dr. Lucas Joppa Dr. Lucas Joppa is the first Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft where he leads the company's sustainability efforts through ongoing technology innovation, program development, policy advancement, and global operational excellence. With a Ph.D. in Ecology from Duke University and extensive publication in leading academic journals, such as Science and Nature, Dr. Joppa is a uniquely accredited voice for sustainability in the tech industry. In addition to formerly serving on the Federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained U.S. National Climate Assessment, Lucas is an Associate Editor for in Chief for the Ecological Society of America's EcoSphere journal, an honorary Fellow at the UN Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC), and serves on the boards of leading scientific organizations. In 2017, he founded Microsoft's AI for Earth program—a five-year, $50-million commitment to leveraging AI and machine learning to help transform the way society monitors, models, and ultimately manages Earth's natural resources.