In the summer before tenth grade, Jack Sperling played a key role in helping to create the logic that serves as the backbone of FFEN’s signature Food Sourcing Analysis.
He learned Excel in high school and began emailing spreadsheets of food sourcing data back and forth with FFEN Executive Director Kate Burggraff. The two worked on how to create the initial template to bring in food shelf sourcing data from food banks and food shelf service statistics to create a visual report to help guide food shelves in making decisions.
“I just knew FFEN had a data problem,” Sperling said. “I was just so happy that I’d found a real-life application to these functions and pieces of Excel that I learned in a class.”
Sperling, who has dyslexia and dysgraphia, knew from an early age he wanted to help people and that his strengths were in non-traditional places. When a family member connected him with FFEN, he said he had found a place to give.
“I found my strength was being able to apply the knowledge I have to someone else to help them succeed,” he said.
Since 2019 Sperling has been working behind the scenes on the Food Sourcing Analysis with FFEN. As a key member of the data analysis team, in 2021, he took what would have been hundreds of documents downloaded, uploaded, copy, and pasted repeatedly and helped to create a searchable Amazon Web Services database that allowed FFEN to look at gross data from the field.
Sperling worked alongside FFEN’s full database team and Food Sourcing Analysis Report Steering Committee. The end result was a system that allowed FFEN staff and skilled volunteers to look at macro/system level data to develop benchmarks for the state’s hunger relief sector. Those benchmarks allow food shelf leaders to see how their services compare to others in Minnesota.
“Seeing the process go from potentially hundreds of files on your desktop with data you don’t know how to work with to a graph and a chart where you can see where you sit and how you can do better…I want that to be available to all food shelves.”
Sperling, now a junior at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, said his parents John Sperling and Rebecca Brown Sperling, instilled in him a love for helping others.
Sperling said as a high schooler he did not understand the impact of FFEN’s Food Sourcing Analysis work but today he said the reports can drive change and efficiency at food shelves across the state.
As Sperling studies biomedical engineering and computer science, he is still helping FFEN.
He worked most recently with FFEN staff and the team at Slalom Consulting on the next iteration of the Food Sourcing Analysis. The newest version of the report, he said, pulls in even more data and will give food shelf leaders more ways to look at the work of their organization.
“This will allow food shelves to understand the data they have to make better decisions in the future and help their communities,” he said.
Sperling has been working on the database administration side of the project. He helps FFEN address issues and updates with Amazon Web Services, and he knows the inner workings of how AWS data comes into the new system.
“One of the things I have loved seeing is how we’ve been able to extract new data that we previously hadn’t,” he said. “It is a new way to help show how a food shelf is doing compared to other food shelves in that same food bank region. You can really see the whole picture of how you compare to other food shelves. It is cutting down on manual labor and it is giving us new ways to visualize data.”
When Sperling is not helping FFEN, he is studying. He plans to apply for medical school and hopes to become a doctor.
“I love helping people and I love when I can do that with technology as well,” he said.
