Introducing new additions to the team (Pt. 1)

Many of our posts over the last month have centered around stepping back and refocusing on who we are, where we are, and where we want to be. It's the continued insight and vision that follows our annual retreat, that time each year -- this year in early February -- where our global team has the opportunity to be in the same room, to focus on the work ahead and the year ahead. As we talk about improving community engagement, on growth and future alignment, and on being the best Q we can be, these are all big ventures that are going to require help. You might have noticed our team looked a little bigger in this year's group photo as, over the past few months, we've grown our group considerably, bringing on a new round of super ninjas to help deliver on products and promises for our community and our clients. So, without further adieu, here's the first installment of awesome folks now part of the team; more to come on Monday!

Aurelia Moser

Aurelia Moser is a data munger and code monkey based in New York City. She's joining Ushahidi as a 2014 Knight Mozilla Open News Fellow to build cool things and otherwise collaborate with the team. With a background in library metadata and lab work, she builds visualizations and narratives around data, supported dually by passions for data preservation and open information. In her free time, she organizes NYC Nodebots meetups and coordinates curricula for Girl Develop It, a non-profit teaching women how to code in low-cost classes. For fun, she runs a radio show based on the semantic web, and digs studying, silent discos, and shoegaze. Follow her @auremoser or at algorhyth.ms.

Sara-Jayne Terp

Sara is a New-Jersey-based data scientist, working on Ushahidi deployments and customisations for external partners. She’s been part of the Ushahidi community since January 2010 and is an active lead in the crisis data community.  Before joining Ushahidi, Sara worked on development data science at the UN, ChangeAssembly, and as an independent expert for groups including UNOCHA; her earlier work includes innovations management, unmanned systems, situation awareness systems, computer vision, risk modeling, sonar signal processing, pyrotechnics, automated creativity, and algorithms to fuse uncertain and incomplete information at various consultancies, companies and universities.  She currently teaches technology system design at Columbia SIPA, co-leads OpenCrisis.org, blogs about hardware at SensorNews.org and blogs about data science (as her cat Emily) at Icanhazdatascience.com.

Jonathon Morgan

Jonathon is a technologist and entrepreneur focused on software architecture and product development. He was previously the CTO of South American travel startup SA Trails, Principal Technologist at Bay Area design/build agency Bright & Shiny, and founder of Good at the Internet, an interactive consultancy whose clients included SXSW. He regularly speaks on system design and emerging technologies. As technology lead for CrisisNET, Jonathon is focused on building the premier platform for global crisis data, and the community who will power that platform. Jonathon lives in Austin, TX with his wife, nine-year-old daughter, and small, fuzzy dog. You can find him @jonathonmorgan.

Mathias Antonsson

Mathias is the Programme Manager on Making All Voices Count. He is from Sweden but now lives in Nairobi. He has also lived and worked in Australia and the US. Mathias has been working with ICT through Communications and Project Management for both the United Nations and the Swedish Development and Cooperation Agency for over five years. He started the @UN Twitter account, is a PRINCE 2 practitioner and has won a UN 21 Award which is awarded personally by the Secretary-General "to recognize the outstanding work of colleagues who advanced projects with great impact and innovative potential." As a political scientist and through his previous employers Mathias brings a different perspective to the Ushahidi team.  He occasionally blogs and you can reach him at @plurrify.

Shadrock Roberts

Shadrock applies geography to humanitarian and development challenges and has joined Ushahidi as Director of our Resilience Responsiveness Initiative: a multi-year project to provide The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities with tools that strengthen situational awareness of community needs and improve municipal decision making. Prior to joining us, Shadrock was a founding member of the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) GeoCenter, where he established new approaches to open data by combining traditional geographic information systems and crowdsourcing. Whether mapping economic development or producing geospatial data for risk reduction , his work transcends organizational boundaries, convenes diverse groups of stakeholders, and engages students and digital volunteers to create open data for improved decision making. Together with creative uses of technology he understands that holistic solutions must address organizational capacity and policy  to ensure sustainability. Shadrock has also developed remote sensing techniques for refugee enumeration at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; co-founded participatory mapping initiatives for disaster response ; and is currently making a concerted effort to (finally) finish his PhD at the University of Georgia. Despite all this, he remains addicted to fresh air and spends as much time as possible lost among big mountains. You can reach him at @shadrocker.