Helen McKenzie is the Geospatial Advocate at CARTO, where she works to get the data science community excited about thinking spatially. With a professional background spanning over a decade in geospatial consultancy since 2012, Helen has worked across diverse fields including flooding, landscape design, transport, infrastructure, and ecology.
Helen graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BA in Geography followed by an MSc in GIS. She is passionate about empowering people with the best data and visualizations, believing that spatial thinking should be accessible to everyone, not just GIS specialists.
She has authored some of the most popular guides for GIS professionals transitioning to modern spatial analytics, including "How to SQL: A Guide for GIS Users" and "Spatial Indexes 101." These resources have helped countless traditional GIS practitioners adapt to cloud-based workflows and spatial SQL approaches. Her writing style makes complex technical concepts approachable, whether explaining geographically weighted regression, spatial joins, or H3 hexagonal grids.
Helen's work at CARTO involves creating tutorials and demonstrations across diverse applications—from electric vehicle site selection and wind farm location planning to analyzing retail center behaviors and Eurovision Song Contest venue selection. She has spoken at major conferences including Geospatial World Forum, sharing insights on how location intelligence is reshaping retail, insurance, and telecommunications industries.
Her educational content spans multiple platforms, including video tutorials on QGIS visibility analysis using LiDAR data. Helen is committed to de-gating her content to make it accessible to everyone, embodying her belief that spatial analytics tools shouldn't be locked behind proprietary barriers. She advocates for best practices in data visualization, including accessibility considerations for people with color vision deficiency.
