Lily James Olds

Hi, Catherine.

It's so good to have you here in the TED offices.

A rare treat.

I also just want to say to our listeners that if you hear some people or sounds, it's because we are surrounded by our colleagues here.

So many different things to get into with you, but I would love to just start by knowing what first sparked your passion in using satellite data to tackle food insecurity.

Yeah, I love that.

You talk a lot in the conversations that we've had about the disconnect between the massive amounts of data and knowledge that we have and the, as you call it, failure of translation, you know, where the data doesn't actually reach farmers in real time or in a useful format.

Right.

From your perspective, what's the biggest barrier standing in the way of turning the data you have into action?

I'm curious, is it about where the technology is in development, which we'll get into later, obviously, and you talk a lot about, or is it the way that that information is then delivered to the farmer or the person on the ground that can make use of it?

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

It almost feels like part of what you're describing is that last mile of translation, as you're saying.

It's like there's the specificity on the ground and there's the specificity

from building the data sets, but not from the right places.

So as you said, where does that connect?

And I think one of the things that I think is so kind of fascinating about where you are and that some of our conversations have revolved around is

You wear so many hats.

You sit in so many different kind of institutional and otherwise silos, right?

It's like academia, you connect to the government, you connect to policy, you connect to smartholder farmers.

And so much of your work to create change is about connecting those dots.