Apogeo’s sister publication, LBx Journal published a Special Feature on Women in Location, which uniquely tells the story of location-based technologies like never before. You may recognize some of the women featured above. Read more about them and how their views of the role of location in society, the economy, and the world can inspire us all here.
I have been Co-founder and editor of LBx Journal for four years now and I have become increasingly concerned by the visible lack of women in the location industry. How many conferences do you attend where women are 10 percent or less of the audience, or where women represent less then one percent of the speakers, and webinar participants are mostly men? Company Boards of Directors and management teams are mostly men. And the list goes on. One male senior executive of a very sizable location company even observed that “the lack of women in the industry is just not healthy.”
While the gender disparity is stark, it is not unusual in the technology field. Women have not naturally gravitated towards engineering, science, and technology for a variety of social, cultural and personal reasons. But what was particularly gnawing at me was the fact that location-based thinking, applications, and technologies are so naturally aligned with the way women think and view the world because of the holistic nature of spatial analysis. So if it’s so natural, why aren’t there more women in the space, or why aren’t they visible? That set me on the path to finding dynamic women from across the location ecosystem at varying stages in their careers to put not only faces, but women’s faces to the various aspects of location.
My goal, as I told all of the women profiled, was to produce a very inspiring feature on Women in Location. I think we accomplished that. But I think we accomplished even more. Not only are the women in this feature inspiring, their views on location inspiring, their roles in promoting the importance and development of location inspiring—especially their unique ways of executing their individual responsibilities—but collectively, they have expressed the very human aspects of location.
They have personified the ecosystem of information that stems from understanding the power and role of place in our lives. Location-based thinking and technologies are not just about the ROI, new products, revenue goals, cost cutting, and targeting consumers to buy more stuff, which have been the focus of a great deal of our reporting these last four years; they’re about the human connection we all have to ‘place,’ and what that means to us as individuals—how we see the world, and how we behave in the world—for better or worse.
The women profiled in this feature represent an astounding breadth of experience from deep science to geospatial expertise to business savvy in various roles, including engineering, sales and marketing, finance, and management. They put faces, personalities, and visions to such areas of location as 3D big data management, environmental and atmospheric modeling, location-based services and mobility, mobile marketing and targeted advertising, SmartCities, geo-accounting and geo-business intelligence, and to such industries as retail, nonprofit, consulting, and communications. Looking at location through this broader, more diverse lens, for me, elevates the location industry to a new level.
I would be remiss in not pointing out that, while they were not profiled in this feature, women head up the majority of the geospatial publications, including Tracy Cozzens, Managing Editor of GPS World, Jane Elliot, Publisher of Directions Media, Adena Shutzberg, Executive Editor of Directions Mag- azine, Myrna James Yoo, Publisher of Imaging Notes and LBx Journal, and myself included as Editor of LBx Journal. There are also many more women whom we look forward to profiling in our next feature. Read on for the creativity, authenticity, and pure passion that emanates from these incredible Women in Location…
>> Read the full feature here
Natasha Léger
Co-Founder, Editor
