How data science is changing the world for the better

With political, social and climate crises mounting throughout the world, it’s been a tough year for optimism. Yet that is what Michael Miebach offered at the 2023 United Nations General Assembly this September. In a speech before the U.N. Security Council, Mastercard’s CEO laid out how well-planned public-private partnerships can help advance humanitarian causes. He also emphasized that one of the most valuable contributions private entities can make is not necessarily money, but their expertise.

For Mastercard, that expertise is the technology and tools to analyze data, and the company is using it to put issues of sustainability, equity and inclusion into a broader context — and zero in on individuals who need the most help.

When responsibly used, data can be an enormous force for good in the world. Here are a few examples of how that evolved over the past year.

Creating safe, happy homes for those in need

After the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, refugees were pouring across the border into Poland. Among the displaced was Alona, below, who traveled with her young son. But even in asylum, they faced significant challenges as they tried to adapt to a new country in which  many cities offered scarce work and housing options.

Alona found Where to Settle, Mastercard’s platform to help Ukrainian refugees figure out the ideal place to live by presenting users with the estimated cost of living, potential job opportunities and housing offers in different locations. Now, in their new hometown of Sochaczew, Alona and her son are thriving.

And the platform is expanding beyond refugees. Polish students are taking advantage of the app as they move for university. The idea is that Where to Settle — which Fortune magazine recognized in its annual Change the World list of companies “mobilizing the creative tools of capitalism to help solve social problems” — will eventually be available wherever Mastercard is available.

Empowering informal workers

In impoverished countries like Mozambique, informal workers — those whose sources of income are not recorded by the government — struggle to make ends meet, and they do not possess the resources or know-how to grow their businesses. However, Data for Workforce Nurturing, or D4WN, is empowering these workers to earn a living wage. Pulling data outputs from Com-Hector, a virtual assistant that helps low-income workers with advertising and business management, and Biscate, a digital job board for the informal sector where clients can find workers, D4WN provides business insights to users so they can build their businesses and gain financial resilience and independence.

D4WN was one of nine awardees around the world to win Data.org’s $10 million Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge, which sought innovative examples of data for social impact, with support from the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Keeping humans at the center of AI

This year, Mastercard hosted its second annual Impact Data Summit, bringing together leaders in the world of AI, tech and data science to talk about how data can help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges, including climate action, gender equality and inclusive economic growth.

Participants acknowledged that, for all of its promise, AI can misconstrue or misrepresent data to exacerbate existing social issues or even spark new problems. The key to leveraging technology is keeping people at the center, from using inclusive data to developing impactful public-private partnerships to making sure that AI solutions serve human good above all else.

Harnessing data for good remains a work in progress. But by partnering with policymakers, NGOs and other leaders, corporations gain a new perspective on what role their innovations can play in the world at large. As Miebach told the U.N., “Let’s challenge ourselves to uncover ways technology can be used to help the most vulnerable.”