Matthew Pennells
Matthew Pennells is an digital transformation professional, specialising in location intelligence and digital business transformation, with an extensive career in public, private and voluntary sectors. Currently Matthew leads Esri’s business in Africa. He also volunteers his time to support GIS Professionals and the humanitarian sector via the international charity MapAction.
With experiences ranging from managing GI architectures, delivering transformation projects, strategy design and implementation as well as overall business benefit of ‘place’ Matthew has seen many good and not so good uses of location data. His goal is the better understanding and wider spread use of information management and its intelligent application to improve organisations in all sectors.
Through his work and volunteering, Matthew has gathered a diverse but tailored set of skills ranging from location driven digital business transformation, effective business leadership, to demonstrating the value of information management and user engagement. His various roles mean these skills have been applied to save millions of pounds in public sector projects through to saving livelihoods after natural disasters.
Matthew now applies his skills and experience to support the transformation of organisations and countries through effective use of geospatial infrastructure. He is actively involved in initiatives around Sustainable Development Goals, OpenData, Data Literacy and Industry community building.