Our Director of Partnership Development, Leslie Cheung, embarks on her next open data adventure!

Our Director of Partnership Development, Leslie Cheung, has recently moved on to her next work adventure. We wanted to take the time to thank Leslie for her contributions during her time here, and to recognize everything she has helped us accomplish.

Leslie joined Powered by Data in early 2017. As our second full-time employee, Leslie jumped into the work, and took on a number of responsibilities at the organization. Primarily, she was responsible for leading our open data consulting services, which focused on helping government departments and agencies develop and implement open data plans. During her first year she helped us double the number of partners from the year before, expanding the reach of our mission to help the social sector share, use, and learn from data.

In addition to  developing these partnerships, she also managed and led the implementation of many of these projects. This work involved We conducting research and strategic analyses on the open data and open government plans and activities of some of leading organizations and government departments in this space, including the Canadian Space Agency, Natural Resources Canada, and Canadian Heritage. Leslie’s leadership helped us refine our capacity-building approach for potential users of open data. Incorporating this approach into the outreach and stakeholder consultations resulted in more actionable feedback and stronger relationships between open data publishers and users.

We are particularly proud of the work that Leslie led with Canadian Space Agency. Under her leadership and guidance in research design and implementation, we conducted an international survey where we engaged stakeholders around the world interested in accessing and using space data from Canada. This helped the Canadian Space Agency better understand the nature of the demand for their data and information, for what purpose those resources would be used, and how to publish them in order to facilitate more use. You can read our condensed final report here.

Leslie has since joined the Open Government Team at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat as a Senior Advisor where she will continue centring user needs in the publication of open data. We wish Leslie the best of luck in her next adventure, and we’re excited for her to continue to help organizations leverage data in ways that are effective and impactful.