Joana is a software engineer with more than fifteen years experience and a strong expertise in the field of geospatial tech and analytics.

After acquiring a PhD in Geographic Information Systems, at the University College of London (2007), her drive to solve real-world problems has led her to SMEs, an international organisation, a research foundation and a start-up. Joana has been very much involved in the Free and Open Source Software community, in particular in what concerns geospatial technologies, standards and data. This has led her to become a charter member of the Open Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) in 2017, and the vice-president of the Portuguese chapter of OSGeo. During 2017 she also took a leading role at the board of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI), as a board director of the Industry Advisory Council. Joana is the founder of EarthPulse, a SME in the field of data engineering and geospatial analytics. She is also a reviewer for the European Commission, and has been involved in education, teaching the next generation of full-stack developers and data analysts. As Developer Relations at the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Joana is responsible for connecting the OGC standards with the wider developer community, hopefully increasing their adoption and contributing towards making them (even) more developer-friendly.