Speakers: Denise McKenzie

About

Denise is a strategic advisor, partnership builder and presenter with over 20 years experience with the global geospatial community. She has worked internationally to evangelize the benefits, value and application of location data across government, the private sector and academia with recent focus on the ethical use of location data. Denise is now the Community & Ethics Partner at PLACE – a non-profit data institution, founded to make mapping more accessible and affordable so that decision makers have the data they need to improve the places around them. Through this role she leads the development of the global membership community and partner program that will use the data in the PLACE Trust and also development of the ethics and responsible use of location data programs at PLACE including promoting the uptake and utilisation of the Locus Charter.

Prior to PLACE, Denise co-directed the Benchmark Initiative operating through Ordnance Survey’s Geovation and it is through this role she became a co-author of the Locus Charter. In the broader geospatial community, she is the Chair-Emeritus of the board of directors for the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) in the UK and remains on the council as the Lead for Ethics. Denise is also a member of the Global Advisory Board for the Location Based Marketing Association and a steering committee member for Women+ in Geospatial. Previously she has worked with the Victorian State Government in Australia and as Head of Outreach and Communication at the Open Geospatial Consortium. Denise is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy and Politics from Monash University in Australia and a Masters of Science in Sustainability from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.