Twyla McDermott

GIS Manager and Corporate Strategic Technology Planner
City of Charlotte, North Carolina

Twyla McDermott is currently GIS Manager and Corporate Strategic Technology Planner for the City of Charlotte, North Carolina. She manages the City of Charlotte Enterprise GIS program across 14 departments to maximize investments and reduce duplication of geospatial investments. Her work also focuses on citywide coordination of technology through the implementation of enterprise architecture planning.

Ms. McDermott’s professional background includes 20 years experience in geospatial technology consulting and research for a number of retail, urban development, health care and government clients. She has extensive experience with using GIS to support emergency events including Emergency Operations Center (EOC) support in Jackson, MS and Stone County, MS during Hurricane Katrina and with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg EOC. She holds a MA in Geography from Appalachian State University, a BS in Geology from the University of North Carolina (UNC), a degree in Accounting from Kings College, and has completed post-graduate course work at UNC. Ms. McDermott areas of specialization are strategic planning, enterprise architecture planning, regionalism, and applied geographic information science.

Ms. McDermott is currently providing leadership for the Central Carolinas Spatial Data Framework, an initiative to provide the organizational, technical and operational structure for sharing the most accurate, current and seamless data for the 16 county area of the Charlotte Metropolitan Region of North Carolina and South Carolina. She is actively involved in federal geospatial activities including the Geospatial Profile for Enterprise Architecture, the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) initiative to establish the foundation for sharing geospatial data, applications and other technology components at all levels of government. She serves as co-convener for the FGDC Future Directions Urban Area Team to develop a policy guidebook for establishing data sharing collaboratives for metropolitan regions in the US.

Ms. McDermott is a founding officer and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Community Mapping. She serves on the Board of Directors for Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont, a position she has held since 1996. She has also been involved in environmental efforts in the Charlotte Metropolitan Region since the early 1990s including serving as Board member for Central Carolina Air Coalition and Air Quality Chair for the Lincoln Natural Resources Committee.