Meet the Team: Liz Scott, Head of Data and Insights

Next in the spotlight of our ‘meet the team’ series is emapsite ‘veteran’, and author of our recent blog post on net zero and sustainability, Liz Scott.   

Liz’s deep expertise in geospatial data spans a 17-year career at emapsite. Liz currently leads the Data and Insights team managing emapsite's data programme. 

Can you give us some background on your journey into the Geospatial Sector? 

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in the natural world and environmental issues, but due to a mix of questionable career advice and just lack of awareness of what was ‘out there’ I ended up studying engineering instead. I discovered the geospatial world whilst at university but didn’t then have the means to change course and so headed into the world of IT. 

Early on in my career working in IT support I was motivated by helping people and demystifying the complexity of tech back in the days when some folk were still scared of computers. Over time however, I came to the realisation that I wanted to fuse my technical understanding with an element of creativity and I was drawn back to the world of mapping, this time in a better financial position, and I was able to complete a post graduate diploma in mapping and cartography. As soon as I qualified, I saw a job opening advertised at emapsite, and, as they say, the rest is  history. 

Tell us a little about the roles you’ve held at emapsite over the past 17 years. 

I originally started as part of emapsite’s tiny technical support team back in 2004. This position provided me with the opportunity to develop my broader geospatial skills using the tools we had back then – desktop GIS, image processing tools and fledgling custom-built webservices. 

I’d usually spend my time supporting customers in understanding the most effective way of utilising geospatial data to best suit their needs.  

In all, during my 17 years at emapsite, my roles have included pre and post sales support, product design, data and content management – and leading the data and insights team.   

What do you enjoy most in your role as Head of Data and Insights? 

We’re the team that produces the products that emapsite sell. We immerse ourselves in the data, getting to know how we need to engineer each incoming data source, as well as exploring the content itself – the possibilities through the lens of how our customers might be able to get some sort of benefit. 

I’m lucky to lead such a great team, with our common goal to optimise emapsite’s value-add to our customers – we want to deliver them something they can use straight away. It is rewarding to be able to analyse the content of the data, to identify and explore different application scenarios. At times our work can also extend to customer advice - for example, if a customer has a particular data challenge. I enjoy encouraging my team to learn new skills and make an effort to find what motivates us individually. 

I’ve studied and learnt a significant amount about geospatial data over the years. I’ve been an Ordnance Survey Accredited Consultant when this scheme was running, plus enjoyed helping out with the informal geospatial group meetup Maptime in Southampton, and delivered talks at both Geomob meetup in London and the AGI (Association for Geographic Information) conference in the past. 

How would you describe the culture at emapsite? 

We’ve grown over the years but we’re still a small company – everyone knows each other despite the fact over the past eighteen months we’ve had quite a few new faces who we didn’t get to meet for many months! We put great effort into ensuring everyone meets each other regularly whether in person or via video, and despite the shift now to ‘hybrid working’ we’re still holding weekly all-company video meetings to share team news and keep up the communal continuous learning.