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My name is Catherine Nakalembe, and I monitor crops from space, working with farmers around the world.
We combine satellite images with ground data, extract this information into informational products
that are useful for decision makers to ensure that people who might be impacted
by extreme events, like droughts or floods, still have access to food at the end of the growing season.
It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of learning, but it is also really rewarding to
see how hard and strong people work in order to survive. It is also incredibly challenging
in the sense that it keeps you on your toes. It keeps you thinking. It gets you to want to solve
things. It gets you to want to help other people.
I grew up in Uganda, and maybe 70 or 80 percent of the people here are smallholder farmers.
And you would find a person working on their field every day,
and it was almost always guaranteed that that field was going to fail.
In 2021 with all the capabilities, all the data, all the information, all the resources that are
being put into ensuring people don't go to bed hungry, we need to do things a little bit better
and make it sustainable, lucrative, profitable.
So I love hiking. I love taking photographs. I always like that part -- that kind of brings me out in nature.
As we travel to collect data, as we travel to do training,
I learned so much in that process, and I found that the meaning for my work is more clear when I interact with more people.
And I really love that about my work.
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