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Impact

What We Do

Team Impact takes the lead on Kensho’s community involvement and skills-based volunteer efforts.

The cross-functional team currently has three working groups – Data Journalism, Environmental Impact and Educational Equity. These working groups have tackled projects large and small with a range of external partners and an eye towards initiatives that allow Kenshins to use their in-demand skills in data science, machine learning and software engineering and more to have maximum positive impact in their communities.

Our Work

Team Impact is passionate about solving problems in arenas where there are opportunities to make meaningful contributions with our skills. The current working groups are Data Journalism, Climate Impact and Education Equity.

Read about Team Impact’s projects and events on our blog

Team Data Journalism

The Data Journalism working group focuses on projects related to data and the media.

Their projects have included a Wikipedia suggestion engine that offers context to online readers, producing publicly available Wikimedia datasets for natural language processing, analyzing census and voter registration data to monitor for voter purges, and looking into how programmatic advertising allows companies to inadvertently fund online misinformation. Their partnerships include:

  • Credibility Coalition

    Credibility Coalition

  • Ohio Voter Project

    Ohio Voter Project
  • Wiki Cred

  • Kensho Datasets

    Kensho Datasets

Team Climate Impact

The Climate Impact working group focuses on projects related to climate change and protecting the environment.

The team’s efforts have included work to bring awareness to the climate impacts of behavior, research, analysis and education related to honeybee habitat data, analysis of the future tree canopy in Boston and building a tool to help people make sustainable choices in their diet. More on the team’s partnerships and projects:

  • Speak For The Trees

    Speak For The Trees

  • The Bee Conservancy

    The Bee Conservancy

  • Climate Neutral

    Climate Neutral

  • Sustainable Food Systems

    Sustainable Food Systems

Team Education Equity

The Educational Equity team focuses on projects to improve opportunities at schools for underserved communities.

Their projects have included mentoring and coaching, speaking to classes about career opportunities, and analyzing data about colleges and universities. Some of their partnerships include:

  • John D O‘Bryant School

    • FIRST Robotics Team

  • Yonkers Partners in Education (YPIE)

    Yonkers Partners in Education

  • Data

How to get involved?

Partner organizations: Are you a non-profit organization with a problem you think Kensho’s Team Impact could help solve? We are always interested to hear ideas or proposals from you, but please bear in mind this is a volunteer project. Reach out to the team at impact-contact@kensho.com.

Pitch in on one of our projects! Are you a developer, engineer, data scientist, or other professional looking to help make the world better in some of your free time? Some of our projects can use extra help. Contact the team at impact-contact@kensho.com.

Learn more about Kensho’s cutting-edge technology solutions

History of Team Impact

Kensho’s Team Impact was founded in 2019 based on employee feedback in our annual company survey. The message was clear: Kenshins wanted to do more and have a bigger impact in their communities. Contributing to holiday gift drives or helping to build houses was great but didn’t really use our skills. Kensho has one of the best teams in the worlds of data, ML and software engineering, and it was clear that we could have a much larger impact by putting down the hammers and picking up our keyboards. Our executive team listened to what employees were saying and supported the efforts whole-heartedly.

Since its founding, Team Impact has worked on a wide range of projects, from targeted, one-day projects to longer-term, ongoing partnerships and initiatives. The team has hosted biannual Impactathon days, where employees from across the company contribute a day of their time to a community project.

The team takes a grassroots approach. All of our projects originate from employees seeing an opportunity in their communities and finding a way to help—with support from other Kenshins.

Today, the three working groups meet regularly to discuss plans and cowork on projects, and “help wanted” notices are posted in the company newsletter and Slack channels when projects need a volunteer.