
Heather Leson
Bio
Heather Leson is driven by a world where everyone lends a hand. At the intersection of social impact, strategy, technology, and open principles, she delivers innovative products and experiences with global networks. Heather has over 25 years of experience in community engagement, internet technologies, and product development. As an Open Organization Ambassador (Red Hat), Heather writes and advocates for open organizational values to support governance shifts and strategic global community engagement. A leader in the open space: she has represented and worked for many open organizations, including serving as the Board Member of both the OpenStreetMap Foundation (2 years) and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (4 years). In HOT, Heather is focused on community engagement, organizational development, and governance. She currently chairs the HOT Governance Working Group. See more at LinkedIn and @heatherleson.
Posts
Mini-Mapathon for Sri Lanka Floods at Understanding Risk
It is morning in Venice, Italy. We are having a mini-mapathon in support of the Sri Lanka Flood actiation live from the Understanding Risk...
HOT Announces Tyler Radford as our Executive Director
We are excited to announce that Tyler Radford has accepted the position of Executive Director of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Since Tyler was named Interim...
Be the Executive Director of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Passionate about maps, humanitarian response and global community? Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) seeks an Executive Director to dream big building on our successes...
Global Studies and Collaboration with CrisisMappers Japan
On April 28, 2015, Prof. Furuhashi, of Aoyama Gakuin University's School of Global Studies and Collaboration held a seminar for some twenty beginning students studying Crisis Mapping. The seminar took place at the Global Learning Commons, a free space for students to gather at Aoyama Gakuin’s Sagamihara campus. This online project is part of the relief efforts of volunteers for Nepal’s catastrophic earthquake.
Welcome Tyler!
Welcome Tyler, HOT’s new Interim Executive Director. He starts in true HOT spirit - the week of a major deployment in response to the...
Helping to map Nepal: getting started
[Guest post from Pete Masters, Missing Maps Project Coordinator] The Nepal earthquake has inspired a whole new wave of people to join HOT...
OpenStreetMap community India rallies in aid of their neighbor Nepal Report #3
[Ed. Note: Guest post from By Sajjad Anwar] The OpenStreetMap community all over India is rallying to aid its neighbor Nepal after the most...
HOT Activates for Nepal Response - Report #2
HOT has been active almost 20 hours since the devastating earthquake in Nepal. Our thoughts are with the affected communities and our fellow Mappers...
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team seeks Interim Executive Director
HOT has grown from a community of contributors with an idea to a global community and organization with many successes. HOT has some exciting...
Mapping Vanuatu Islands
The Cyclone has come and gone from Vanuatu Islands. The devastation is massive with the BBC reporting that Development has been wiped out. In...
Support HOT with an Annual Donation
HOT is a growing global community. Over the past year we have had many successes in our mission to apply the principles of open...
Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby) Activation Live
Typhoon Hagupit / Ruby is currently expected to make landfall in South East Samar early Sunday Morning (December 7, 2014). In support of OpenStreetMap...
Thank you, Gunner and Aspiration Tech
The HOT Board would like to extend our sincerest thanks to Gunner (Allen Gunn) of Aspiration Tech for his facilitation and organizational development help...
Join HOT in Berlin at OKFestival!
(Blog post by Katie Filbert, Heather Leson) The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is super excited to host a workshop at the Open Knowledge Festival...
DISPATCH: IEEE Humanitarian Technology Conference
A few weeks ago HOT was a guest of the 2014 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC). In the session, Samual Paul...
When Birds of a Feather Map Together
All spring we’ve been thinking about how to grow and support the HOT community. We know that we need to improve support to keep...
Mapping Request for Carles area (Typhoon Haiyan)
We have a specific mapping request from Robert Bannick of the American Red Cross. Can you lend some time and tackle a tile? Hello...
HOT Mapping party at #ICCM in Nairobi
Severin Menard and I are in Nairobi for the International Conference of Crisis Mappers. We decided to host an afternoon mapping party with the...