Mila Dorji is the Public Health Analyst on the Research and Analysis team at Direct Relief, a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization working in all 50 states and 100+ countries to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty and emergencies without regard to politics, religion, or ability to pay.

Powerful new tools and data systems are constantly emerging, many with enormous potential to benefit humanitarian operations and the public good. However, the paths by which emergent technologies scale towards adoption are rarely straightforward. Flexible thinking and a creative willingness to adapt are essential to the realization of their full potential. This talk will focus on Direct Relief’s use of spatial data - especially in several iterative deployments of the innovative realtime geomessaging tool Balcony.io - to protect vulnerable groups in high-acuity situations around the globe. These experiences will serve as a lens to explore how emerging social sector technologies can navigate hurdles, progress towards adoption, and produce tangible positive results along the way.