Rebecca Firth
Executive Director / UK
Rebecca Firth is the Executive Director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). She leads HOT’s global team and works with mapping communities, governments, humanitarian organizations, technology partners, and funders across more than 30 countries. Under her leadership, HOT completed its Audacious goal to map an area home to one billion people previously missing from the world’s maps. She is now leading HOT’s next phase: building a sustainable global marketplace that connects organizations needing high-quality geographic information with skilled local mapping communities, creating both better data and meaningful livelihood opportunities.
Since joining HOT in 2016, Rebecca has played a central role in the organization’s growth and evolution. She led the development of HOT’s two successful Audacious Project proposals and helped establish four regional Open Mapping Hubs across Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. She has also worked to expand investment in local mapping communities, strengthen the use of open geographic data by governments and humanitarian organizations, and develop new partnerships across philanthropy, technology, and international development.
Before joining HOT, Rebecca worked in digital and innovation consulting at Accenture. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Geography from the University of Cambridge and has lived and worked in Borneo, Japan, Colombia, and Peru. In 2020, she delivered a TED Talk on the power of open mapping to make invisible communities visible. Rebecca lives in London, UK.
Posts
Jan. 27, 2017
Recap of the UN World Data Forum: using OpenStreetMap for the Sustainable Development Goals
July 10, 2017
HOT Supports Community Driven Open Data: Ger Community Mapping Center, Mongolia
Aug. 3, 2017
Crowd2Map Tanzania: putting rural Tanzania on the map with the help of a HOT Microgrant
Oct. 2, 2017
Microgrants: Humanitarian mapping of coastal wetlands and fishing livelihoods for resilience to climate change and variability, Colombia.
Nov. 2, 2017
HOT Microgrant: Mafalala, Mozambique - Mapping history with a focus on the future
April 12, 2019
Eight New Communities Selected for 2019 HOT Microgrants
Female drone pilots mapping Africa’s largest slum, a youth group changing waste management behaviours in mega-cities, and mappers making Manila more accessible for persons with disabilities. These are a few examples of the eight incredible new community projects that are the recipients of the 2019 HOT Microgrants!
May 10, 2019
#map2020: A campaign to accelerate critical map data collection for humanitarian challenges
Mapillary and HOT are joining forces to accelerate map data collection in undermapped regions. Local mappers are invited to use street-level imagery in mapping projects that address humanitarian or developmental challenges. Two of the projects submitted to the #map2020 campaign will be selected for a fully-funded trip to the HOT Summit in Heidelberg, Germany this September.
June 20, 2019
How #Map2020 Mappers Use Street-Level Imagery to Tackle Humanitarian Challenges
From Ghana to Zambia to the Philippines, we take a look at some of the 33 mapping projects that are taking part in #map2020 to build better maps in undermapped regions. The mapping participants are collecting street-level imagery to improve things like waste management, natural disaster response, and damaged roads, addressing some of the most pressing issues in undermapped regions.
Sept. 27, 2019
HOT launches Microgrants 2020: Funding for OpenStreetMap Communities
Is your local OpenStreetMap community mapping to improve lives? We could have a microgrant for you! Pitch your project and be in for a chance to receive funding as part of HOT’s annual fundraising campaign to support global OpenStreetMap communities.
June 17, 2020
What if we could map an area home to one billion people currently missing from the world’s maps?
We are honored and excited to announce that the HOT community is one of eight recipients of funding from The Audacious Project, a collaborative philanthropic initiative that serves as a springboard for social impact on a grand scale.
June 19, 2020
Four regions, five years, 94 countries, one billion people
In 2019, the HOT community developed a Strategic Plan, which stated an audacious goal: to map an area home to one billion people in OpenStreetMap. But one key question remained: where?
Aug. 10, 2020
HOT’s Community Support Programs - Going Beyond Microgrants
HOT’s vision is to map an area home to one billion people living in poverty and at high risk of disasters by engaging mappers around the world to massively grow the number of local edits to the map. To kickstart planning, HOT’s Community Team has hosted a series of workshops to understand community perspectives.
Aug. 18, 2020
Reflections on our “Audacious” Journey
“Do you have an ambitious idea for tackling one of the world’s biggest problems?”
Aug. 24, 2020
Covid-19 Pandemic in Peru: Mapping Health Implications
As Peru struggles with the impacts of Covid-19, HOT and GAL Group are helping public health officials at all levels of government plan how to support communities by mapping rural and vulnerable populations in the Cusco region.
June 1, 2023
Rebecca Firth on Becoming HOT's Executive Director
I am thrilled to share with all of you the incredible news that I have been appointed as the new Executive Director at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) starting today.
April 14, 2025
Our Journey at Skoll World Forum 2025: a Time for Reflection and Collaboration in a New Era
The Skoll World Forum is over, but the reflections that came from it will definitely stay with us for a long time. Read more about what our Executive Director, Rebecca Firth, and Fabrizio Scrollini, Regional Director for the Open Mapping Hub –Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), learned during the week of April 1-4, 2025.
Feb. 24, 2026
From One Billion Mapped to What Comes Next: A Sustainable Model for Community Data
