I am a data-hungry ecologist by education, and I struggle to stick to just one label - I tend to be involved in several things at the same time. My north star for choosing what to work on is my purpose: to democratise scientific knowledge through technology. I believe increasing critical and analytical thinking in many areas of society is possible by bringing together stakeholders from different backgrounds.

Curiosity drives my journey, it guides me to achieve dreams I didn’t even know I could have. As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut. I don’t think I will ever go to space but I consider the month of fieldwork in Antarctica as achieving that dream (I made a video).

During 10 years, I created opportunities to gain experience internationally and with a variety of organisations involved in biodiversity conservation. I did my work using public grants with limited financing that led great collaborations. I thought my future was in academia, but then one day I saw an advert to volunteer for a user research experiment and I discovered Vizzuality.

As a scientist at Vizzuality, I learnt about more compelling ways of sharing state-of-the-art science than academic papers. For over two years, I led the scientific and data aspects of the Half-Earth Project, where I facilitated the product design and technology migration to the ESRI stack. I worked closely with the engineering lead to design the backend architecture, supported data providers, and led the delivery of communication materials related to biodiversity conservation. I was also involved in smaller projects for the European Commission, the Vaccine Confidence Project and other NGOs. Through this experience, I honed my abilities in managing project roadmaps and collaborating with stakeholders (university researchers and NGOs). Within the self-managed organisation, I led several initiatives across the company, particularly in the team of nine scientists I was part of, related to increased knowledge sharing, improved remote communications and supporting the skills development of peers in communication, data analysis and self-management. I collected internal data to advise on organisational design, team dynamics, team management and organisational communication to improve transparency around accountability.

I joined Cervest to satisfy my interest in gaining more experience in product ownership. During the year and a half as Head of Earth Science, I wore two hats. As an individual contributor I was responsible for the discovery, design and development of a new product: the evaluation of climate risk on natural capital. We were a cross-disciplinary team of user researchers, scientists, designers and engineers and we built an offline solution to test with customers. As a people manager, I led the individual development of five earth scientists, I was accountable for setting them up for success in their workstreams by managing internal stakeholders and resources, including recruitment.

In parallel to my daily work, I belong to an Art History research project where I manage the ArcGIS online account and spatial data. I have previously published with them a translation of 18th century French letters into Spanish. Through that initial collaboration, I identified an opportunity for the researchers to have greater impact by spatially digitising their findings and openly publishing them online.

In my spare time I collaborate in an Art History project at UNED. Studying the cartographies of the city in the Modern Age is an invitation to pose new research questions centred on the spatial dimension. We work from a polyhedral viewpoint, which involves the different ways of conceiving, devising and projecting urban spaces using how they are described, narrated and represented, and how cities are used, passed through and inhabited. I support the team in the design of the GIS database and development of webapps using the ESRI stack (repo and webapp portfolio).

I’m currently taking some time off. I am enjoying reading and networking through virtual coffees, so feel free to drop an email.
gretacvega[at]gmail.com

Oral communications

• Vega, G.C., Teixeira, L. (2020). Why spatial matters in the fight against climate change. Spatial Data Science Conference 2020
• Casal, E., Vega, G.C. (2021).  An odd couple’s journey towards SciArt: Design meets Science and vice-versa. Outlier 2021

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