About Radiant Earth

Increasing shared understanding of our world through community-led initiatives that make data easier to access and use.

The future of our species depends on our ability to develop sustainable methods of sharing data with one another. Shared access to data allows humans to develop a fact-based and shared understanding of our world, which is necessary for us to collaboratively address global challenges.

Expanding access to data is necessary to empower more people to perform scientific research, reduce the cost of research and product development, enable reproducibility of research, and foster collaboration among institutions.

Our vision is a world in which shared data is used to improve decision making at all levels of society.

Please visit our homepage and blog to learn more about our current initiatives.

We also provide fiscal sponsorship and support services to initiatives aligned with our mission, including:

Convenings of data practitioners
Projects that produce novel shared data products

Our team

Louisa Diggs

Director of Operations

Louisa is enthusiastic about storytelling and visualization and their possibilities to transform complex topics into simple, yet engaging and effective narratives. Louisa has helped governments, development organizations and NGOs focusing on environmental issues in Africa with approaches to convert data to information, and information to knowledge and attitudinal changes. Before joining Radiant Earth, she served as an international communication consultant, working with conservation organizations to develop behavior change strategies, incorporating digital communications channels, and generating science information products for laypersons.

Michelle Roby

Developer Advocate

Michelle uses her passion for community building, education, and communication in her role as Developer Advocate at Radiant Earth. In this position, she strives to empower the geospatial community by providing valuable resources, fostering collaboration, and promoting innovative technologies. Michelle loves discovering and building meaningful connections, both among individuals and between organizations. She believes we are stronger and more productive when we join forces and work together. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Spanish Language & Literature and a GIS & Computational Science Certificate from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019. Since her graduation, she has continued to live in Boulder, with the exception of one year living in the Mexico City area. She dreams of mexican corn tortillas every night.

Jed Sundwall

Executive Director

Jed has spent his career working at the intersection of data, product development, cloud computing, economics, and policy. He has helped create data sharing best practices that have been adopted worldwide by NASA, USGS, Google, Microsoft and other institutions around the world. He has taught at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and is a technical fellow at the Taylor Geospatial Engine and technical advisor to Flickr Foundation. He has previously served as technical advisor to the Landsat Advisory Group and on the board of directors of NatureServe. Before joining Radiant Earth, he created the Amazon Web Services Open Data Program. A proud student of the humanities, he uses his “spare time” to produce Techs on Texts, a podcast about the intersection of literature and technology. He is fluent in Spanish, pretty good at Portuguese, and can passably order food in German.