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Humanitarian AI Today

Humanitarian AI Today

Written by: Humanitarian AI Today
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 Humanitarian AI Today is the leading AI for Good podcast series focusing on humanitarian applications of artificial intelligence. We interview leaders, developers and innovators advancing humanitarian applications of AI from across the tech and humanitarian communities. The series is produced by the Humanitarian AI meetup.com community, linking local groups in Cambridge, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Toronto, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Geneva, Zurich, Bangalore, Tel Aviv and Tokyo.All rights reserved
Episodes
  • Javan Van Gronigen on Fundraising and Building an Engagement OS for the Modern Nonprofit

    Javan Van Gronigen on Fundraising and Building an Engagement OS for the Modern Nonprofit
    Feb 25 2026
    Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In short daily flashpods, Voices passes the mic to guests to learn about new projects, events and advances in artificial intelligence and to discuss topics that are important to the humanitarian community. In this flashpod, Javan Van Gronigen, Founder and Creative Director of Fifty & Fifty, a digital agency that works with leading social-minded organizations, and Donately, a fundraising software provider for nonprofits and peer-to-peer fundraising platform, joins Humanitarian AI Today Producer, Brent Phillips, to discuss digital storytelling and the technical infrastructure required to sustain modern humanitarian missions. Javan points out that while many organizations have powerful missions, only a small fraction feel truly ready to adopt and execute their digital strategies. Drawing from his extensive background as a creative director for global campaigns, Javan emphasizes that for humanitarian organizations to remain competitive in a crowded digital attention economy, they must move beyond random acts of marketing and instead adopt a cohesive "Engagement OS" that treats brand identity and donor friction with the same rigor as top companies. The conversation primarily touches on digital transformation and how organizations can leverage AI to bridge the gap between small-scale manual engagement efforts and scalable, one-to-many engagement models. The interview serves as a strategic roadmap for humanitarian practitioners looking to navigate the complexities of AI and ensure that technology serves as an invisible operating layer that amplifies human impact rather than obscuring it. Javan argues that the solution lies not just in adopting more tools, but in ensuring that those tools are secondary to a primary, authentic narrative that builds long-term trust with a global audience.
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    23 mins
  • Golestan Radwan and Panagiotis Moutis Discuss AI, The Environment and The Sustainability Paradox

    Golestan Radwan and Panagiotis Moutis Discuss AI, The Environment and The Sustainability Paradox
    Feb 25 2026
    Voices is a new mini-series from Humanitarian AI Today. In short daily flashpods, we pass the mic to guests to tell us about new projects, events and advances in artificial intelligence and to discuss topics that are important to the humanitarian community. In this flashpod, Golestan (Sally) Radwan, Chief Digital Officer with the United Nations Environment Program and a Board Member of the Allen Turing Institute speaks with Panagiotis Moutis, Assistant Professor at the City College of New York and a member of the Climate Change AI initiative about AI’s environmental “sustainability paradox” with Humanitarian AI Today Producer, Brent Phillips. Balancing technology’s potential to solve complex environmental problems against AI’s ecological costs, high energy consumption, water usage and e-waste, Sally and Panos emphasize that AI is not a magic solution but a complex equation where the new tools that we’ll use to save the environment are themselves taxing its resources, and suggest that AI’s value must be weighed against costs and resources that the technology draws away from other humanitarian and environmental needs. The participants explore the potential of on-device machine learning to reduce the environmental footprint of AI by shifting workloads from data centers to local hardware and discuss the critical role of data infrastructure and global cooperation in addressing climate change. Sally touches on the challenges of data interoperability, noting that too many different standards exist for environmental data, which complicates the "multivariable analysis" needed for accurate climate forecasting. Panos offers a somber closing perspective, likening the struggle against climate change to a war where key battles may already be lost. He argues that AI's greatest potential might lie in creating clear, uncurated narratives to help the public and politicians grasp the existential urgency of the crisis. To help address this need for reliable information, Sally highlights the launch of EnvironmentGPT, a new tool designed to make environmental science easier to access and understand. Humanitarian AI Today is a community-led initiative advised and co-produced by collaborating organizations and technology companies. Amidst a fragmented landscape, the podcast serves as a recognizable channel for organizations, donors, and innovators to collectively use to report AI projects, events and advances, turning raw insight into collective intelligence.
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    26 mins
  • Yarissa Matos-Soto on AI Implementation and Bridging the Connectivity Gap

    Yarissa Matos-Soto on AI Implementation and Bridging the Connectivity Gap
    Feb 22 2026
    Yarissa Matos-Soto, Founder of The Curioux, speaks with Humanitarian AI Today producer, Brent Phillips about the critical need to effectively assess artificial intelligence for outcomes and risks within the humanitarian sector. Drawing from her background as a biochemist, data specialist and startup founder, Yarissa explains how her organization, The Curioux, provides advisory services to help for-profit organizations structure their data strategy and pipelines to make data more actionable. Beyond her corporate work, she discusses her passion for environmental science, specifically her efforts to create open-source intelligence for biodiversity that aggregates hyper-local data. She also highlights her leadership role with the Association for Latin American Professionals (ALFA), where she works to formalize the local economy in Puerto Rico through networking and AI training initiatives. The conversation explores the practical realities of deploying technology in challenging environments, emphasizing the "hidden costs" of connectivity in places like Puerto Rico and Ukraine. Yarissa shares insights on how local professionals navigate rolling blackouts and infrastructure hurdles to maintain digital livelihoods. Looking toward the future, she envisions AI becoming an invisible operating layer in daily life and encourages humanitarian workers to view AI as a tool for augmentation rather than a threat, urging them to find use cases that make practical sense for their missions.
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    12 mins
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