Heather Leson is driven by a world where everyone lends a hand. She delivers innovative products and experiences with global networks at the intersection of social impact and technology.
Using her strong coalition-building and engagement skills, she has led strategic organizational transformation for IFRC, Ushahidi, and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Heather co-led the first IFRC Digital Transformation strategy (approved by the IFRC Governing Board). She also created, delivered, and co-edited the IFRC Data Playbook by engaging 1000s in the pilots, a beta product, then activated 100s of playbook contributors for the V1 (cc-by-nc 4.0). A leader in the open space: she has represented and worked for many open organizations (open source, open data, and open maps) including serving as the Board Member of both the OpenStreetMap Foundation (2 years) and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) (4 years). She is the current chair of the HOT Governance Working Group and an "Open Organization Ambassador".
Authored Comments
Thanks so much for your comments and support. My original response a day ago did not post so I will try again.
Don and Hal, thank you. Evert, always a pleasure. Keep up the great work.
Steve, I agree that impact matters. There are ongoing research projects on this. Some examples can be found on crisismappers.com, http://www.unfoundation.org/what-we-do/legacy-of-impact/technology/disa…, and the UNOCHA Digital Humanitarians in the Networked Age Report - http://www.unocha.org/hina.
Shane, thanks for your comments. This is exactly why I think we need a Skills/topics matching tool in HFOSS. I've explained it above and would love to keep talking about it. Regarding using technology for the environment, this is also a favourite subject of mine. Please see our work on MicroMappers.org and the fantastic publiclab.org.
Each of the communities is working on get involved and thank you rewards. To me the best example is the work by Mozilla's Open Badges as noted above. Learn more - http://openbadges.org/
I do think that your comment about recognition across Github repos is very important. I will keep thinking about this feedback and come back to you.
All - thanks so much again for your questions and comments. It is my life's mission to help people get involved more. There is work to do, but it is so rewarding.