Cheryl Desha serves as a Council Member of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) through the Australia Chapter and co-chairs Working Group 2 - Industry. She is the Theme Leader for "Digital Earth and Resilient Infrastructure" in the Cities Research Institute, founder and co-lead of Griffith's Disaster Management Network, and Director of Griffith University's Disaster and Resilience Management Facility N79 (Nathan Campus, Brisbane, Queensland). Cheryl works to build capacity for sustainable development, as an environmental engineer and within the spatial and geospatial community in Australia and internationally. Her research focus is on decision support for always-on decision-making environments, dealing with pragmatic and consistent decision-making in the face of fatigue, reduced resources and protracted timeframes. This includes the topic areas of energy and energy efficiency, in addition to infrastructure resilience, biomimetic and biophilic solutions. It includes collaborations internationally including with the Japanese ISDE chapter, creating coursework in disaster management and resilience. She is a chartered Environmental Engineer and has a doctorate in rapid capacity building within highly regulated environments. She has previously served on the Board of the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia (EEC), and the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM) - Academic Network, which included the UNGGIM Disasters Working Group. In 2020, she was awarded the Queensland Government's IGEM Champion of Change Award by the Inspector General Emergency Management.