John Houweling (he/him)

John is a thought leader who is passionate about making a positive difference helping organizations “put their data to work”. He loves working with his team to generate “aha moments’’, change perspectives and create new possibilities using data. Over his career, John has frequently demonstrated how organizations can share data to break down silos, transform services and eliminate costs. This pioneering work helped put York Region at the forefront of governments deriving insight from their trusted data.

In 2011, John joined York Region as Director of the GIS Program, and evolved the team to become corporate leaders in data and analytics. In 2019, John and his team developed a 4-year Data and Analytics Master Plan to help guide the Region to become a data empowered organization. John was instrumental in developing an Analytics Playbook for public sector organizations interested in building data and analytics capacity. In 2020, York Region was selected out of 350,000 organizations world-wide as the recipient of the Esri President’s Award for its innovation and collaboration in the use of geospatial data. He has given presentations to numerous federal, state, provincial and municipal governments from across North America interested in a pragmatic approach to building data and analytics muscle.

Prior to York, he spent 15 years as Esri Canada’s Ontario Region Director helping build new markets and awareness for a burgeoning, data intensive technology. Prior to ESRI he worked in the Ontario public sector where he developed the framework for what is now Land Information Ontario – the province’s data sharing portal.