Our Mission
DataKind™ (formerly known as Data Without Borders) brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations through a comprehensive, collaborative approach that leads to shared insights, greater understanding, and positive action through data in the service of humanity.
We are living inside a data revolution that is transforming the way we understand and interact with each other and the world, and it has only just begun. Data has the potential to make hidden relationships crystal clear, to be a common language between people who might never have spoken, to inspire collaboration, to off er metrics for decision making, and to turn seemingly unrelated ideas into powerful insights that can solve the most complex and intractable problems we face.
DataKind™ is a community of pioneering data scientists with the talent, commitment, and energy to open the door and show us the way.
Our Focus
Because data science skills are so in demand, we cater to the schedule of data scientists and provides a myriad of ways to get involved:
DataDive™
A DataDive™ is a weekend event that teams three selected social organizations that have well-defined data problems with volunteer data scientists to tackle their data challenges. These events are completely free and voluntary and serve to energize the base, provide direct services to organizations, and to enlighten social sector groups to the power of using data in their programs.
DataCorps™
The DataCorps™ is a select group of data scientists who work on volunteer or contract data projects part-time. These members work for one to six months on targeted data projects that they flesh out with the organizations that apply. Our volunteers are paid by the organization or are housed within private companies who take on the projects (e.g. Google gives 20% time to three scientists for a month to execute a project).
In-House Data Staff
We maintain a full-time staff of data scientists that take on the most pressing and high-impact problems for a variable length of time. These full-time employees are paid directly for their services by the organizations involved.
Our Team
DataKind™ is comprised of a group of conscientious data scientists, NPO/NGO gurus, do-gooder CIOs, and dedicated organizers. We are based out of New York City but look for data problems far and wide. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook, or by email.
Jake Porway
Founder and Executive Director
Jake Porway is a machine learning and technology enthusiast who loves nothing more than seeing good values in data. He founded DataKind™ in the hopes of creating a world in which every social organization has access to data capacity to better serve humanity. He was most recently the data scientists at the New York Times R&D. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics from UCLA.
Craig Barowsky
Co-founder and Director of Operations
Craig Barowsky was the Vice President of Production at Oddcast and has over 5 years of project management experience. At Oddcast he focused mainly on producing a wide variety of web-based, viral applications, mobile applications, and worked closely on product development.
Drew Conway
Co-founder
Drew is a Ph.D. student in NYU’s Dept. of Politics and a prominent member of the New York City data science community. Drew organizes the NYC Statistical Computing Meetup, is the co-author of a forthcoming O’Reilly text on machine learning, and works with many local start-ups on addressing their data needs.
Advisory Committee
Holly Ross
Holly has spent more than seven years at NTEN, working with
community members to identify the technology trends that will reshape the nonprofit sector. Holly has been recognized as one of the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 three times, in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Mark Hansen
Mark is currently Associate Professor of Statistics at UCLA, where he also has an appointment in the Design Media Art Department. Previously he was a member of the Technical Staff in the Statistics and Data Mining Research Department of Bell
Laboratories.
Hilary Mason
Hilary is the Chief Scientist at bit.ly, where she finds sense in vast data sets. She’s also a co-founder of HackNY (hackny.org), a non-profit organization that connects talented student hackers from around the world with startups in NYC.
Lucy Bernholz
Lucy is a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, a Fellow with the Hybrid Reality Institute and former Fellow of the New America Foundation. Among other advisory roles, Bernholz serves on the Board of The Craigslist Foundation, on the NeXii Industry Standards and Advisory Board, and is an advisor to the Center for Digital Information.
Jeff Stanger
Jeff is the founding director of the Center for Digital Information. He was also an award-winning Internet consultant and developer through his firm NetCampaign, a Washington, DC-based web development
and strategy firm.