WEF

This meeting remains the densest gathering of decision-makers anywhere: public, private, science, technology, and civil society, all compressed into one intense week. There’s nothing like Davos, and overall we do need Davos, imo. I was on the ground, but our whole team worked incredibly hard to make this week count. Between interviews, articles, meetings, panels, and strategy sessions, the pace was unrelenting. And yet, looking back at the blur of 72 calendar entries and the “who’s who”, it is hard for me not to feel the familiar tug of “more”. One more session. One more corridor conversation. One more unexpected connection. ...

I’ll miss bedtime stories next week. Not because I love the 75 events in my calendar at Davos, but because I’m carrying something personal with me. My kids are growing up in the EU, in Denmark, where safety, nature, and independence are built into everyday life. That kind of childhood isn’t magic. It’s the result of decades of public investment, data, and care. For most of the world, that model has simply been out of reach. At LGND AI and Clay we’re building extremely horizontal planetary intelligence: tools designed to understand the world at scale. Child infrastructure, air quality, climate risk, food security, disaster response. This is just one possible use. ...

Eleven years ago, I wore a traditional Asturian dress to the World Economic Forum gala in Davos. At the Forum, I spoke on our work doing tech innovation at the World Bank. The outfit made more headlines than the work. Turns out symbols help translate complexity. The outfit helped connect elite spaces with grounded realities of my rural cultural roots. This January, I’m going back, for the 4th time, with the same mission. This time, the technology is AI — AI for Earth. At LGND AI (and Clay), we’re making Earth searchable: turning satellite and geospatial data into usable intelligence for climate, energy, infrastructure, risk, nature, and defense. The models work, the products are real. The hardest part is not building the AI. It’s conveying just how transformative AI for the physical world can be. We’re not alone in this work. But we do need help reaching out. ...

- During my recent trip to Myanmar (or Burma, or Birmania) we had the chance to visit a rural village. This was part of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders meeting. This is a little report about the experience.- Kungyangon Township is roughly 3 hours southwest of Yangon. I write “roughly” because the drivers of our 4 SUV parade, with police, lost their way. Not much to blame since some of the roads, bridges or even the village itself are not on the map. Oddly enough I could still spot the missed turn with my GPS and the data I had downloaded on the hotel Wifi. We also had, as I was told by our local translator, a group of 30 police that the government sent to “protect us”. Problem is they sent it to another village with a similar name, so we never saw them. ...

Today the World Economic Forum (WEF) announces this year’s awards of “Young Global Leaders” (YGL). I am one of them. According to the website: “Young Global Leaders represent the future of leadership, coming from all regions of the world and representing business, government, civil society, arts & culture, academia and media, as well as social entrepreneurs. Nominated under 40, these young leaders are proposed through a qualified nomination process and assessed according to rigorous selection criteria accepting only the very best leaders who have already demonstrated their commitment to serving society at large.” ...