After nine years at Data Driven Detroit (D3), I’m thrilled to step into the role of Co-Executive Director alongside Noah Urban as our Founding Mother, Erica Raleigh, heads off on her next adventure. My love for D3 started way before I joined the team as a GIS Analyst in 2017, back when I was getting my Master’s in Geography and Urban Studies at Georgia State University. I am and always have been drawn to maps – the way they tell a story about people and place, the way they can help bring numbers and data to life, the way that they tie a phenomenon to the place and situation where it occurred. So when I was introduced to this remarkable place-focused, dedicated, mission-driven organization, I knew that was where I wanted to be. A little while after I moved back from Atlanta, GA, a GIS analyst position became available and that was how I became a part of this fantastic organization.
Of course, there are other important parts to my story besides my obsession with maps, people, data, and endless hours spent stalking D3’s open positions. I have an Elementary Education bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University (Go Green!), where I met my husband (who recognizes that my attention will always be pulled whenever I pass by a map). For a time I co-owned a guided backpacking company with my brother, which I guess was just another way for me to study the nuances of geography. I have a 13 year old terrier who doesn’t need to be as loud as she is and doesn’t care what a map might say about a squirrel’s territory. I also have two young kids who are constantly bringing me home the maps they drew at daycare and elementary school.
Since starting at D3, I’ve worked on over 100 projects across several different roles — as a GIS Analyst mapping residents’ requests for information about their neighborhoods, as a Project Lead facilitating our Data University courses and Detroit-area data collaboratives and managing the maintenance of our free online tools (State of The Child, Housing Information Portal, and the Neighborhood Vitality Index), and until recently as Project and Program Operations Director coordinating how our internal work runs day to day. And now, I’m elated to step into the role of Co-Executive Director, helping to continue D3’s progress towards our goals.
Through all this important work I’ve had the honor of working with and for Erica, who has helped mold, guide, and taught me more than she’ll ever know. Her fierce and kind leadership at D3 has helped to create a place where I love to come to work. Her love for the data and the support we provide to residents, partners, clients, and funders is a foundational touchstone from which I have gathered much of my passion. The foundation she, along with our other leaders along the way, has set is the reason D3 is in such a stable and reputable position, and continuing that work is a calling I am honored to step into. The values and goals of D3, unchanged since our founding, will continue to guide our path forward as Noah and I continue to lead D3 together.
Together, Noah and I plan to continue D3’s meaningful momentum towards our goals – more real-time information, supporting people in using data to make decisions, and continuing to explore how we can get data and organizations to use data collaboratives to answer the trickiest questions facing Detroiters today. As we move through the next year of transitions, I am thrilled to help lead D3 as we examine how we’re fulfilling our mission, how the landscape has evolved, and continue figuring out how to better serve our community. I look forward to continuing the incredible resident, partner, and organizational relationships I’ve had the opportunity to build, and am delighted to have the chance to meet so many more of you. For those of you who I haven’t had the privilege of working with/for yet, I come from a long line of yappers and am looking forward to our chats and explorations together! Please reach out to say hello via email: llyons@datadrivendetroit.org.