Linda Raftree organized the first MERL Tech Conference in 2014, building on an early landscaping paper titled Emerging Tech in Monitoring and Evaluation, which was the first attempt to define the field of “MERL Tech”. Since then, The MERL Tech Initiative (MTI) has been working with social sector organizations to achieve thoughtful tech-enabled program design, implementation, and MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning).

We have collaborated with dozens of organizations on responsible, ethical, realistic design, use, and governance of digital technologies and digital data to achieve better outcomes. We have convened communities and developed resources to share good practice and improve humanitarian, development, human rights, and peacebuilding outcomes. 

How our work has changed

Over the past several years, the scope and scale of our work has changed. Technology has become more prominent in almost every area of social sector work, in many ways due to the COVID-19 era, which forced organizations to rapidly adopt digital approaches. On top of that, since 2022, AI has spread like wildfire. More funders, implementers, and tech developers are asking how to design, use, and measure the impact of these tools responsibly, and answering them takes a wider range of expertise than it did a few years ago.

In response, Linda has been working more closely with an expanded group of trusted experts, including Bárbara Paes, community manager for the MERL Tech Community of Practice and coordinator of MTI’s training initiatives; Cathy Richards, who supports MTI with IT and systems, as well as co-leads the Climate and Sandbox Learning Groups; Emeka Nwankwo, who provides MTI with strategic advisory and quality assurance on MEL; Isabelle Amazon-Brown, who brings expertise on chatbots and human centered designer; Kelly Church, who supports digital transformation and AI policy work; Kevin Hong, who supports our work with AI, Evaluation and Philanthropies; Quito Tsui, our humanitarian AI lead; Savita Bailur, who leads MTI’s AI and Gender Inclusion work; Varaidzo Faith Magodo-Matimba, MTI’s AI in Africa lead; and Zach Tilton, who supports MTI on AI in Evaluation work.

The right infrastructure for this work

MTI needs the right infrastructure to support these projects and collaborations and to take on even more ambitious and impactful work. Late last year we applied for 501(c)3 nonprofit status, and it has now been granted. This means we can manage our own grants, pursue new streams of work, strengthen existing ones, and bring our workstreams together into a more intentional strategy. We will share more on that over the coming months.

Our mission and values remain the same: Our priority continues to be influencing and supporting the wider social sector in adopting fair, accessible, inclusive, representative, and safe approaches to the use of technology and digital data. And now, we have the right vehicles to do that: both a for-profit and a non-profit.

We are grateful to all the funders, supporters, and collaborators who have supported us over the years.

Welcoming our board members 

As we take our first steps as a 501(c)3, we are proud to be able to count on two fantastic board members with decades of experience working at the intersection of tech, AI, and the social sector: executive leader Veronica Olazabal and social entrepreneur Jono McKay. 

Veronica Olazabal is a pioneer in the tech for good and responsible AI movements, with over 20 years of experience connecting capital markets to community outcomes. Her work centers on modernizing how ethical data architectures, emerging technologies, and evidence inform forward-looking capital deployment. Currently Climate Finance Lead for Climate SMILE, she previously served as Chief Impact Officer at the BHP Foundation and Managing Director at The Rockefeller Foundation. Veronica serves on the faculty at Columbia University, teaches the inaugural impact investing and evaluation course at the World Bank’s International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET), and advises the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Howden Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. A past President of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and a Belfer Center Women in Power Fellow, she has received the Candid Data for Good Award, the AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award, and the 2026 Molly Hageboeck Award for Excellence in Innovation.

“AI is advancing exponentially, bringing enormous possibility. But amid the excitement, it can be easy to overlook potential harms. MTI has a critical opportunity to anchor the responsible AI conversation and lead the sector in harnessing its potential while minimizing harm,” explains Veronica. “MTI offers an exciting and trusted space to move beyond the hype, learn from one another, and explore practical ways to harness AI and technology responsibly in service of people and the planet.”

Jonathan, known as Jono to friends and colleagues, is a designer and social entrepreneur from South Africa with more than two decades of experience working at the intersection of technology, media, and social justice. As co-founder of SameSame, he leads a team driven by the belief that every young person deserves a chance to achieve their potential, no matter who they are, where they live, or who they love. Prior to founding SameSame, Jonathan was Chief Creative and Programmes Officer at Girl Effect, where he supported a global team of art directors, scriptwriters, software developers, researchers, and programme managers to create brands, content, and products that informed, inspired, and equipped girls and young women across the world. Over the years, he worked with a wide range of both private-sector and non-profit organisations, including Diageo, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Save the Children, Brac, UNICEF, UNFPA, Facebook, and the Ford Foundation, launching large-scale digital experiences and platforms that have reached over 50 million people in more than 40 countries.

“I’ve known MTI’s founder, Linda Raftree, for over ten years, through one digital hype cycle after another,” shares Jono. “Through it all, Linda and her team have remained constant in their willingness to ask the difficult questions — what is this technology actually good for, who gets to decide how it’s used, who really benefits? Neither doomers nor boomers, to borrow two terms from the AI discourse, MTI charts its own course in a rapidly evolving field. The MTI Team approaches challenging questions with creativity and rigor, imagination and a healthy dose of skepticism. In my role as a board member, I am committed to helping MTI do what they already do, but at a larger scale, with a bigger audience and, if we’re lucky, a more consequential influence on the ways that technologies are being used to serve humanity.”