Russell Deffner
Chairperson Board Of Trustees HOT Philippines at Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Buena Vista, Colorado, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRussell Deffner is a nonprofit governance and disaster-mapping leader with 10+ years of hands-on experience strengthening financial clarity, operational resilience, and community-led emergency response. As Chairperson of HOT Philippines and Treasurer on HOT’s global board, he blends frontline disaster coordination—leading 140+ mapping responses—with strategic oversight in budgeting, internal controls, and risk management. An Executive MBA honors graduate, Russell pairs field-tested GIS and open-source spatial systems expertise with boardroom-level financial stewardship to help mission-driven organizations become both accountable and adaptive. He has a track record of building local capacity so communities can lead responses themselves, and has translated that ethos into scalable governance and reporting practices. Based in Buena Vista, Colorado, he also runs a consulting practice focused on open-source GIS for disaster management, bridging technical implementation and sustainable organizational design.
11 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Executive MBA, Business Administration and Management, General, Executive MBA, Business Administration and Management, General at Quantic School of Business and TechnologyComputer Science, Computer Science at Regis UniversityBachelor of Science, Forestry Concentrated in Fire Science with a Minor in Spatial Information Management, Bachelor of Science, Forestry Concentrated in Fire Science with a Minor in Spatial Information Management at Colorado State University
Github Skills (30)
openstreetmap10
fastapi10
javascript10
postgresql10
python10
in-progress10
postgis10
activation10
indexof9
issue-tracking8
jekyll7
documentation7
osm-data5
sanitation5
django5
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
hotosm/ActivationCurriculum
Sep 2016 - May 2022
Work-in-progress Version of the Activation Curriculum
Contributions:1 release, 176 commits, 2 PRs in 5 years 9 months
in-progresscurriculumactivationwork-in-progress
geochasm/DRCOG_Buildings
Mar 2018 - Oct 2018
Repository for DRCOG buildings workflow docs
Contributions:34 commits, 1 PR, 18 pushes in 7 months
buildingsworkflow
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.