US Chief Geographer to speak at PIVOTAL

By on 17 March, 2015

Dr Lee Schwartz

The Pivotal International Executive Summit is will be held in Brisbane from June 29-30, 2015 at the Brisbane Convention Centre. Pivotal aims to continue the conversations of the G20 with a deep focus on the spatial industry and its critical ‘pivotal’ importance to the future of humanity. The speakers consist of some of the world’s most influential and esteemed thought leaders and decision makers in the spatial sciences and industries, including Dr Lee Schawartz, the Geographer of the United States.

As Geographer of the United States, Dr Lee Schwartz holds the position of the Director of the Office of The Geographer and Global Issues in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Schwartz is the State Department’s 9th Geographer, a position that was established in 1921 and bears the statutory responsibility for providing guidance to all federal agencies on questions of international boundaries and sovereignty claims.

Dr Schwartz was also a speaker at the Pivotal promotional event recently hosted by the Australian Embassy in Washington DC and sponsored by Brisbane Marketing. Other speakers at this Washington DC launch of Pivotal included Dr Robert Corell – the former head of Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences and the global change programs of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF), and Dr Tim Foresman, the SIBA Chair of Spatial Information at QUT.

Dr Corell was chair of the historic ‘wakeup’ report known as the “Arctic Climate Impact Assessment’ that alarmed the world to the immediate and severe realities of climate change. He is one of the few scientists to have made it to the front cover of the Rolling Stone Magazine heralded as a ‘tide turner’ and one of the greatest climate warriors and heroes and honoured by the music magazine.

Dr Foresman was formerly Chief scientist at the United Nations, and head of NASA’s Digital Earth program and will chair the Pivotal Executive Summit in Brisbane. Foresman is also recognised as the ‘Godfather’ of the geobrowser, having once inspired and funded a team of elite programmers to build a ‘spinning globe’ to help document some environmental scenarios in Africa. This team became Keyhole – a startup company later acquired by Google, and turned into Google Earth. All three are among the team of some of the world’s elite thinkers in the spatial sciences who will be leading the discussions at the Pivotal International Executive Summit in Brisbane, Australia on 29-30 June 2015.

The Pivotal International Executive Summit is hosted by SIBA with support from partners QUT, Brisbane Marketing, NASA, SSSI, and the ISDE.

Name: Pivotal International Executive Summit

Time: 8am – 5pm

Date: 29-30 June 2015

Venue: Brisbane City Hall

Address: 64 Adelaide St, Brisbane, QLD, Australia 4000

Cost: Early bird $1500, regular $1800.

Event Website: www.pivotal2015.org

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