GeoIgnite presents its annual Diversity Leadership Award to individuals and organizations advancing the evolution of diversity and inclusion in the Geospatial community. We are proud of our leadership in this space. For the third year, GeoIgnite Diversity Leadership Summit has recognized the exciting and ambitious people and initiatives that support the success of diverse workforces across the country and around the world.

This year, we are proud to present the GeoIgnite 2021 Diversity Leadership award to Tanya Tejassvi.

Tanya holds a master’s degree in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation and leads the Accessibility Initiatives at SPARC BC. Tanya also moderated this year’s Diversity Leadership panel and is one of our Go Geomatics Community  Managers and a leader in our community.

Social Planning and Research Council of BC (SPARC BC) has been there for 50 years, working in partnership with individuals, organizations, and all levels of government to meet the social development needs of people and communities to promote positive social policy change. At SPARC BC Tanya is currently working on mapping accessible parking and accessible outdoor spaces. People with disabilities help rate those parking spaces through their experience, and Tanya helps train them to use GIS Data collection apps. Tanya also helps map hot spots for parking permit misuse which helps in enforcement of such offences, She performs research and data analysis on various demographic data sets, health and activity limitation data and designs surveys for social initiatives

We are grateful for Tanya’s leadership and diversity and inclusion work in the Geospatial community and wish her the best of luck with her future efforts.