Dr. Vanessa Lawrence - Honorary Vice President

For a period, the GA had several Honorary Vice Presidents, and they have also been featuring on the blog.
Vanessa Lawrence was formerly an Honorary Vice President of the GA. I met Vanessa several times, including at the SAGT Conference, where she was speaking in a year when I was also presenting.

She also presented me with my Ordnance Survey Award at the RGS-IBG back in 2008.

She is a board member of the Turing Institute, from which the following biography is taken:

Dr Vanessa Lawrence CB works internationally as a senior advisor to governments, inter-governmental organisations including the World Bank and large private sector organisations. She is a Director of Location International Ltd which provides strategic advice and full operational capacity globally, to the public and private sectors, as to how to gain from improving their own use of location information to enhance their decision-making and to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers and stakeholders.

In addition, Vanessa is a Non-Executive Director of the Satellite Applications Catapult, the innovation centre for satellite use in the United Kingdom, on the advisory boards of Seraphim Space LLP, the Space venture capital fund backed by the British Business Bank, the Spatial Finance Initiative, the Urban Big Data Centre and also she is the Honorary Colonel of 135 Geographic Squadron Royal Engineers.Vanessa is a Trustee of the Royal Geographical Society, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southampton and a Patron of MapAction, the UK-based international charity which specialises in supplying geographical information for humanitarian relief operations.

From 2000-2014, she was the Director General and CEO Ordnance Survey, Britain’s National Mapping Authority and the advisor to the British Government for issues involving mapping, surveying and geographic information. She is the longest-serving Director General and CEO of Ordnance Survey since 1875.

From 2011-2015, Vanessa was a founding co-chair of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM).

In January 2008, Vanessa was appointed as a Companion of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (CB) in the Queen’s New Year Honours List.

Image above was taken back in June 2008 at the RGS-IBG

Roger Jeans, then Education Manager, Ordnance Survey - I remember his retirement 'do' at conference.
Louise Ellis, fellow Ordnance Survey award recipient 2008
Dr. Vanessa Lawrence, then Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey (and also Honorary Vice President of the GA)
Me....

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Lawrence

https://www.turing.ac.uk/people/board-trustees/vanessa-lawrence