Engineering for Impact: Problem solving with purpose at Palantir
Editor’s note: In this blog post, we sit down with UK Health Lead Joanna Peller, recipient of Data IQ’s 2022 100 award, to discuss what she’s learned leading Palantir’s UK Health work during the pandemic.
Describe your path to Palantir.
After growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, I moved to the UK to study Mathematics at UCL. I began my career as a software engineer working in Commodities at Goldman Sachs before joining Palantir as a Forward Deployed Strategist in 2016. I was drawn to Palantir because I wanted to be part of a business that would allow me to solve increasingly challenging problems. It was clear to me that I’d be working on projects that had real-world implications. In my early days at Palantir, I worked with a team focused on manufacturing and supply chain solutions. In March of 2020, this supply chain expertise became incredibly relevant, and I began working on the most complex problem of my career to date: helping the NHS deploy our software, Palantir Foundry, to form a single source of truth for the COVID-19 response. I now lead our Health work in the UK, which spans everything from vaccine supply chain optimisation to elective recovery and beyond.
Data IQ just named you to their 2022 list of top 100 most influential people in data. Tell us a bit about what this award means to you.
Being part of Data IQ’s 2022 list of most influential people in data was a really special privilege. Those of us that fall into the ‘data enabler’ category tend to be partners and service providers that, although not responsible for any data itself, are focused on building the right solutions and infrastructure to underpin it. So much of my own fulfilment in this role comes from witnessing our partners like the NHS realise value and make better use of their data with the help of Foundry. Having the opportunity to contribute, even in some small way, to the extraordinary work the NHS does every day has been the highlight of my career. Being recognised for that work is a real honour.
How has Palantir’s health work changed in response to the Pandemic?
In the UK, COVID-19 has not only changed the very nature of our work, but it has changed the significance of our outcomes as well. While the heart of our health work has always centred on improving patient lives, the pandemic gave this mission new meaning. Almost overnight, we were tasked with supporting the NHS in solving its largest peacetime logistical challenge as quickly as humanly possible. Local and national leadership needed to create the right data infrastructure that could allow them to see the true picture of infection spread and critical care capacity, and we were fortunate enough to be the partner they trusted to support them in tackling this problem.
How would you describe the culture around problem solving at Palantir? How has it impacted your work?
One of the mantras integral to Palantir’s culture is ‘the best idea wins.’ I’ve found that in order for the best idea to win, it needs to exist in an environment that encourages diversity of thought. It’s not something we can take for granted. I have a responsibility to my colleagues, and our partners, to identify opportunities to foster an inclusive approach to collaboration.
Enabling this type of inclusive collaboration is an integral component of our external work as well. Often, companies like Palantir are seen as the “outsiders” that come into existing businesses to “consult.” I can understand in theory why that narrative exists — but that’s not how we work. Many of our healthcare partners have experienced staff that have spent years, if not decades, working with the problems we’re currently trying to help them solve. We never assume we have all the answers and we rely heavily on the expertise of our customers. When we can build an environment that’s rooted in mutual learning and collaboration, we all win.
What’s one valuable piece of advice you were given earlier in your career that still resonates today?
The importance of developing and nurturing a growth mindset. The concept of a growth mindset was developed by psychologist Carol Dweck, who describes it as an attitude towards intelligence as something that is never fixed, but continually developed. It considers trial and error to be an integral part of mastery. Underlying this mindset is a simple, but critical, motivation: an unwavering desire to learn new things, even when it is uncomfortable.
Many of us are taught that embracing new challenges, learning from our mistakes, and thoughtfully considering the feedback we receive is what we ought to do, but to truly embrace a growth mindset, I have to decide every day that I want to learn and become better at what I do more than I want to have the right answer. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by, and constantly working with, lots of very smart people. They challenge my assumptions all the time. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t learn something from (usually more than) one of them. I wouldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t embraced the cycle of trying, failing, and learning, and found a working culture that did the same.
How is the work you do at Palantir different from other engineering roles?
One of the things that sets my role apart is the actual solution I get to work with. Our Foundry platform is designed with an inherent flexibility that allows it to be adapted at speed, which in turn allows our clients to configure their tools and dashboards to accurately reflect needs on the ground. This means that I get to work on custom solutions that can provide major insights for our customer within a few days, and sometimes even within just a few hours.
A compelling example of what this flexibility means for my work was the NHS COVID-19 Vaccination rollout. Over the course of just a few days, the NHS team was able to assemble the data infrastructure needed for the rollout, creating a full picture of all data sources and assets involved, down to individual vaccine doses. By tracking and integrating data from across the rapidly evolving supply chain, Foundry provided a consistent source of truth for thousands of NHS staff, who used these insights to make data-driven decisions every day.
Being able to track and monitor everything from storage requirements to PPE availability allowed the NHS to create tooling that could anticipate future need, creating an end-to-end virtuous cycle that helped inform and build relevant planning models. The ability to work with partners to scale quickly and create immediate impact is a distinctive feature of this role, and operating in such an agile environment means that no two days are the same.
What are your key areas of focus in 2022 and beyond?
As we look ahead, our focus is simple: we want to continue to work with a broad range of healthcare and life science organisations to improve patient lives. It’s been a tremendous honour and privilege to work with partners like the NHS on projects that have been so critical to pandemic response. As the UK continues its pandemic response and begins to tackle its next set of challenges, we are focusing our efforts on partnerships with organisations that are at the forefront of innovating patient care.
What keeps you up at night?
Thinking about all the things that are left to build.
Want to join Joanna in building the next generation of healthcare solutions? Find out more.
