 Vanessa Lawrence CBDirector General and Chief Executive, Ordnance Survey, UK |
Vanessa Lawrence is the Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, UK. She is the adviser to the British Government and is the Honorary Vice-President of The Geographical Association, a member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, the University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Southampton and Kingston University and a companion of the Chartered Management Institute, a Chartered Geographer and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors. She was elected as an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008 and has recently retired as the Chair of the United Kingdom ACE Association.
She is a patron of two charities, The Cure Parkinson’s Trust and MapAction, a UK-based international charity which specialises in mapping of disaster areas and supplying geographic information for humanitarian relief operations. Vanessa received her business training from the publishing company Pearson plc., and held senior positions at Autodesk Inc. She has received several honours and awards and is one of the few recipients of the Scottish Geographical Medal, a prestigious award conferred by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
In July 2009 Vanessa was appointed Honorary Colonel of 135 Independent Geographic Squadron, Royal Engineers.
