Bright Insights Global
At BIG, we’re on a mission to redefine performance by embracing innovation, inclusion, and impact. We believe that purpose-driven organizations have the power to change the world, and we’re here to partner with them every step of the way.
Partners and Collaborators
Case Studies
Thomson Reuters Data and Innovation Labs
The Labs were an ecosystem of banks, startups, and African universities collaborating around financial inclusion, agriculture supply chain, and land management. The flagship initiative was Bankable Farmer.
Bankable Farmer Research Initiative (BFRI)
BFRI is dedicated to leveraging data science, alternative data sets, and innovative risk modeling approaches to improve financial service accessibility for small commercial farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This commitment aims to tackle the ongoing issue of restricted credit access for these farmers, which arises from a lack of credit history and profile.
Global Intrapreneur Week
Since its establishment in 2020, we have been actively involved in co-creating equity intrapreneur-focused content for Global Intrapreneur Week. This annual event serves as the premier global platform dedicated to intrapreneurs, offering a collective opportunity to reroot, reconnect, and re-energize intrapreneurial spirit worldwide. Our diverse skill set and deep understanding of intrapreneurship enable us to host insightful panels and facilitate engaging workshops that delve into various aspects of corporate innovation and intrapreneurial success. Through these activities we aim to spark global dialogue, promote corporate social innovation practices and inspire transformative action among intrapreneurs globally.
The Equity Circle
The Equity Circle, co-created with The People Group and The BMW Foundation, originated from the global awakening in 2020 around Equity, Diversity, and Belonging (EDB). It addresses the deep-rooted nature of EDB challenges within organizations and work environments, seeking to foster continuous learning and transformation. The initiative employs an Emergent Strategy approach to facilitate connections and collaborations that enhance the impact of initiatives both within the BMW Foundation and with external network partners. The aim is to facilitate inclusive, innovative and regenerative work environments that allow all employees to bring their best selves to work.
Ask An Elder
Redress the effects of global white washing of African history using SANKOFA, the West African concept of understanding history in the present with an eye to moving forward more intelligently. This project centers around wisdom sharing through intergenerational storytelling and using “stories as data”
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About Us
At Bright Insights Global (BIG), we partner with purpose driven organizations to re-define performance through the prism of innovation, inclusion and impact. We bring a unique mash-up of expertise in data product innovation, intrapreneurship, DEI leadership, and modern Africa-optimism to our clients and partners.
We believe deeply in the power of corporations to make positive change in the world. With 20+ years experience innovating data products for Thomson Reuters, a global multimedia news and data company, we bring a broad range of digital product development expertise. We combine global business and emerging tech to contribute to solutioning of some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
Our track record of successful corporate social innovation initiatives and the diversity of our case studies and our network, is reflective of our values driven co-creative approach. We are here to collaborate with you to drive the systems change required to build more inclusive, prosperous and regenerative futures.
About Saidah Nash Carter
Saidah Nash Carter is a digital business native and Africa optimist with a passion for value creation and the use of tech to drive innovation for good. She partners with companies, foundations and other organizations to develop and encourage new ways of working that push back against mainstream capitalism’s extractive status-quo. One of the ways she does this is through her Equity Circle work.The Equity Circle was co-created with close partners,The People Group and the BMW Foundation to shift how teams show up at work, interact with each other, and work together. The success of the Equity Circle work proves that by moving away from the status quo and welcoming alternative approaches to “being and doing” together, organizational culture can shift in a way that builds stronger and more intrapreneurial teams.
Outside of the Equity Circle, Saidah has an extensive body of work that illustrates her passion for purpose-driven innovation, including Bankable Farmer and Ask An Elder – both which run through her business, Bright Insights Global, as well as her other current initiatives.
One of her earliest successful co-creations, was an editorial and business collaboration between Reuters Media, Billboard and VNU eMedia that resulted in one of the most profitable and popular syndicated online news services of its time.
In 2015, during her tenure at Thomson Reuters Black Employee Network as global chair, she hosted one of the first open company conversations on race in Corporate America. This was a pivotal moment for the company as discourse of this nature had been taboo up to this point. The approach was honest and data-driven with room for levity and human connection. The Thomson Reuters Race in America event held in February of 2016 shifted the company’s understanding of and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion from that moment forward.
In that same year, she relocated to Cape Town, South Africa, to build and launch a new corporate data and innovation lab for Thomson Reuters. The Labs worked to accelerate inclusive business and enable the African tech and business ecosystem with reliable, actionable data and information. The lab’s initiatives ranged from alternative risk profiles for farming entrepreneurs to blockchain and land rights hackathons.
In 2019, she co-founded Bright Insights Global with Jackie Cureton and launched the NYC Diaspora Think Tank in order to convene a network of finance, technology and media professionals interested in building business connections to Africa and wider diaspora.
Today she continues her work at the intersection of innovation, inclusion and impact. She works closely with incredible partners, co-conspirators, allies and friends on this journey to a more equitable, sustainable and beautiful future.
Ideas
Refinitiv Partners with AFGRI Technology Services to use AI and Alternative Data Sets to Enable Small Farmers to Gain Access to Banking Services Across Africa
NEW YORK & JOHANNESBURG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Refinitiv and AFGRI Technology Services (ATS) today announce the Bankable Farmer Research Initiative (BFRI). B ...
Using AI to Fight the Great Forgetting
Colonialism has shaped our world in many ways – from structural racism to wealth gaps to the stark differences in the quality of life and access to opportun ...
The University of Florida CAME Center – Affiliate Faculty
In her role as Affiliate Faculty at the University of Florida’s Center for Arts Migration and Entrepreneurship (CAME), she plays a pivotal role in fostering col ...
