Volunteer Spotlight: Claire Benard
Claire is a talented DataKind UK community member who has just stepped back from several years in our Scoping and Impact Committee, partly to focus on her new venture Merqato. She’s also managing to fit in some skiing, despite living in Amsterdam!
- Pronouns: She/her
- Roles: Merqato co-founder; DataKind UK Scoping Committee for three years, Office Hours prior to that for three years, and was one of the founding members of the Social Data Society
- Links: LinkedIn
How did you first get into data?
I’ve been working in data since I started to work, which is about 10 years now! I have a Masters in economics with focus on econometrics, and I wanted to do something useful for the world. I found a job as an evaluation analyst for homelessness charity Crisis and that’s how it all started. I was really lucky because I had a great manager who had a strategic vision for the role of data in the organisation. I didn’t realise how lucky I was until I changed jobs! That team was particularly mature.
I then went through a bunch of different roles, starting from roles closer to business intelligence and data analysis, to Machine Learning and software.
Right now I’m working on Merqato, a platform that helps fresh fruit and vegetable organisations match supply and demand with AI-powered forecasts. We started with just three of us, and I was the only tech person. I do a bit more management now, but I’m still very hands on. It’s the nature of being a small organisation, and it’s nice. In management roles, I miss the actual building!
Merqato was started through an accelerator, where the other co-founders met. They wanted to tackle food waste, and were told that the best way to help was to collate all of the data and forewarn organisations when there was a surplus, so that they could prepare and not waste as much. They wanted to make this forecasting tool but didn’t have data expertise, so I got introduced to them. We’re launching our product to measure how much waste we can avoid with AI powered planning tools in March.
I will certainly be recruiting more data people soon!
What do you wish you’d known when you started to get into data?
The advice I would give might be out of date because the world is quite different now! Get involved in communities like meetups, and be curious, there is a lot to learn for free. People share knowledge, tutorials, and resources. That said, people now start in a very different world to the one I started in. ChatGPT has changed everything. Stack Overflow, where I learned everything I know, is almost out of date.
What is a data project that inspires you?
If I don’t answer Merqato to that question, there’s something wrong! I find it interesting because I’ve had a lot of projects where data was an add-on: “we have software and it works so we want to optimise with machine learning”, “we have a service and we want to collect data to gain some insights.”
Here, the product is data, taking information that isn’t used and making it useful, so fruit doesn’t go to waste. There is a direct consequence: if we’re successful, waste decreases. At Crisis, the impact of my data work was a step removed from the front line. But here, if I do my job well, strawberries don’t go to waste. And if organisations can make money from the strawberries, they can pay for Merqato, so it feels very aligned. The technology feeds directly into the environmental impact and the financial health of the organisation.
I wanted my own company because I wanted to be in charge of what I spend my time doing. It was hard to find something where the impact and success were linked together, and data was at the core. Often when you have a lot of social impact, you don’t have a lot of financial success. In the charity sector, the beneficiaries of the system aren’t the people paying for it. This creates a situation where the data collected serves reporting to funders rather than improving the services.
What have you learned in your time volunteering with DataKind UK?
I learnt a lot of practical skills like using new libraries, which was really helpful. Meeting other people who work in data, and were always really supportive and nice, made a difference. Back in “my day” there was no Masters in AI and Machine Learning, so having a community to learn from was much more fun. If you find people to share the experience with, it makes it less daunting.
I’ve enjoyed all of the projects I was involved in — I don’t have one favourite project. I was a Data Ambassador with Christians Against Poverty and I think what we did was really useful — it moved along the maturity of the organisation, and was an inspiring project. I worked on helping to streamline the onboarding process to make it less ‘scary’ for new clients. When people arrive at CAP, they are in a vulnerable situation, and asking for loads of paperwork and details can be an added source of stress.
The question was: could we figure out the key questions you need to ask in order to channel someone into the support routes available? There were some encouraging results about trimming down the onboarding questionnaire, and it was quite a practical application. It also showed the organisation how they can use data beyond monitoring and evaluation or reporting to funders. The last time I spoke to them, they said they regularly refer back to the DataDive project results. I think it’s a good outcome if you can leave a team inspired on how to use data and technology to make services more efficient
What advice would you give new or potential volunteers?
You get out of it what you put in!
Is there a resource or tool you’d recommend to the community?
I still read The Batch AI newsletter from Andrew Ng. It’s a useful source of AI news and a good summary of important events — the sort of things that used to make sector news, and now make ‘the news’.
Tell us something completely non-data-related about yourself!
I have too many hobbies! I played rugby for 10 years in London, and since I’ve moved to Amsterdam I play a lot of tennis. I had a brief period as an ‘adventurer’ — I was going to go on a sponsored expedition to Africa, but then covid happened and the sponsorship was withdrawn. So my adventurer career stopped.
I’m still a very avid skier. My fiance found a job in Amsterdam, the opposite of a mountain, so I spend an outrageous amount of time and money going to the mountains.
