Twitter’s former Head of BD for China, South East Asia, and Australia; Ben Truscello joins as VP of BD for APAC at Mapbox
By: Eric Gundersen
I met Ben in 2008, right around when we bought the domain name Mapbox.com. Ben introduced me to CrisisMappers, Erik Hersman, and many of the other leaders in the “neo-geography” space. These were still the easy days of Development Seed, and Mapbox was just website with some links to our open source projects on GitHub.
It’s about time — let me officially welcome Ben Truscello, former Head of Business Development for SE Asia, China, Australia at Twitter, as our new Vice President of Business Development for APAC, based in Singapore. Ben’s focus will be on expanding our presence in APAC, working especially close with many of our Softbank cousins in the region, and launching our presence in Japan this year and continue to grow our presence in China.
Great to be back in San Francisco, speaking at the @mapbox Locate event about @ushahidi and the early crisismapping days, and offline/online internet with @brcknet today. #explorelocate Bonus pic from the very first CrisisMappers event in 2008 with @ericg
When we met back in 2008 Ben had just co-founded an NGO focused on mobile health organized around a vision that realized the tremendous value of mobile, open data and mapping with tools like OpenStreetMap for crisis prevention and response. Ben’s focus on monitoring health issues meant he was splitting his time between Washington DC, a few blocks from the old garage, and in Tanzania where he was monitoring the spread of anthrax, foot and mouth, and tracking the origins of animal migration from to look for the sources of these outbreaks.
Ben played an active role in CrisisMappers over the years, a project that would be instrumental to the origins of Mapbox. After the earthquake in Haiti, CrisisMappers sprung into action to support the response. Ben called on friends at DigitalGlobe, who agreed to release imagery daily for a week to the group to improve the maps in OpenStreetMap.
The team at Development Seed spent the crisis helping get updated maps and critical location data to the folks on the ground in real time. What’s more, we needed better tools for improving the data collection in tools. These challenges made Mapbox who we are today.
After Haiti and from his days working building the NGO, Ben saw first-hand the value of social media and open data in crisis response. Ben joined Twitter where he’s spent the last 4.5 years leading data partnerships globally and then leading business development in APAC. As Ben put it,
“Twitter is one of the most important data sources in the world. There are half a billion tweets a day created on a huge range of topics. It doesn’t matter if you’re an advertiser or a humanitarian, there’s data critical to decision making in Twitter if you know how to find it. In my roles at Twitter, we created data services teams and programs, established key partnerships for data analytics, and with OEMs. I loved digging in with clients and partners on their hardest challenges.”
I asked Ben what he’s excited about joining Dave and the team in Asia:
“Asia is very dynamic — no two markets are the same. It’s a place where startups are growing and expanding quickly: in ride-sharing, in payments, in e-commerce, and in last mile logistics. There’s a tremendous need for our maps and we need to grow quickly across the region. Mapping is a fundamental need for every company operating in APAC; whether that is in humanitarian relief or in launching new on-demand delivery businesses.”
Ben is based in Singapore and will work closely with our teams in China and Japan. Ben added:
“Expanding in APAC is about solving a fundamental challenge particularly in Southeast Asia, and frankly other parts of APAC, which is high-quality, mapping and location data. We can help solve a lot of challenges in the market for our ecosystem of partners and customers.“
After almost a decade since we met, I’m stoked to officially have him as a member of the Mapbox team. Welcome aboard, Ben!
Twitter’s former Head of BD for China, South East Asia, and Australia; Ben Truscello joins as VP of… was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.