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GeoIgnite 2020 Video: Diversity in Leadership Panel

GeoIgnite is Canada’s National Geospatial conference hosted by GoGeomatics Canada. GeoIgnite was held online using Zoom July 22nd to 24th, 2020.  This event showcased Canadian geospatial community and leaders of Canada’s location technology sector. The conference brought together professionals from government and industry for innovative programming and updates on our sector. Every year GeoIgnite is a unique opportunity for the geospatial community in Canada and abroad to learn, share, and engage with one another at our virtual conference.

Diversity in Leadership Panel: Canada’s Geospatial Ecosystem, 23 July 2020

Speakers:
Nadine Alameh, CEO at Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
Bilyana Anicic , President of Aurora Consulting
David Gachuche, CEO of RiverCross Technologies
David Acco, President of Acosys Consulting Service Inc
Paul Kennedy, Vice President Geointelligence of MDA

Increasing the diversity, equity, and inclusiveness of the Canadian geospatial community is essential to GeoIgnite’s mission. There can be no barrier to talent at Geospatial organizations, as solving the world’s most intractable problems will require a rich variety of perspectives and abilities.

The Diversity Leadership Summit provided a platform for current and future leaders to:

  • Discuss challenges and opportunities surrounding diversity in leadership
  • Be inspired by influential and successful role models
  • Explore new paths to leadership

The Diversity in Leadership discussion, in my opinion, was one of the best talks in the GeoIgnite event. The diverse leaders shared their experience and spoke about the challenges they faced through their professional development.

The Q&A session was also quite considerable. The questions included:

  1. What is your suggestion for connecting with diverse mentors in geospatial field especially for junior professionals and students?
  2. As a black woman at the beginning of my career in this industry, I rarely if ever see anyone that looks like me. I’ve experienced microaggressions more times than I can count in the workplace. I find this to be very difficult to advance or even get a new position, scared of racial bias. What would be a way to combat racial bias in the hiring process and in advancement opportunities?

Watch the whole conversation of Diversity in Leadership panel here!

Saeideh Hejazi

Saeideh Hejazi holds a GIS certificate from Fanshawe College and a master's degree in urban and regional planning.

In the past Saeideh has worked with GIS for humanitarian relief. Volunteered for UN, Crowd2Map Tanzania and URISA’s GISCorps as a web mapper using OpenStreetMap, ArcGIS Online and Story Maps. This experience motivated her to obtain her GIS graduate certificate in 2019, and afterward, she worked for the City of Waterloo as a GIS infra technician. Saeideh also worked as a data analyst and Tableau developer. She has more than 1 year of experience with data visualization and analytics tools including Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep.

In her spare time, she researches and writes geospatial articles and manages the volunteer team for GoGeomatics Canada.

View articles by Saeideh

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