Dr. Camelia Kantor

Education: Ph.D. in Geography (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania), Master’s in Business Administration (Claflin University), Master’s in Education Management (“1 December 1918” University, Romania), Master’s in Geography-Regional Development (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania), Bachelor’s in French and English Literature and Grammar (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania), Certificate in Geoinformatics and Tourism Prospecting (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania)

Describe your job. What are some of the most important tasks or duties for which you are responsible?
I am a senior leader managing day-to-day business operations and assuming a variety of key roles to ensure long-term strategic results. My primary role is in educational and professional workforce development and outreach.

Some of my responsibilities include: academic accreditation management; workforce development through training, professional certifications, and bootcamp development, implementation, and evaluation; K-12 STEM outreach; K-12 through college-level curriculum development and dissemination; coordinating, editing, and writing educational publications and press releases; and supervising, leading, and managing all internal and external educational and professional development operations. In addition, I manage the education and professional development budgets (about $1 million/year) and the annual scholarships program (more than $140,000/year). Lastly, I represent the Foundation as a thought leader by developing strategies, serving as a USGIF delegate and spokesperson to other geospatial organizations, and presenting educational offerings and career pathways via webinars, panels, publications, social media, etc.

What attracted you to this industry?
After nine years of college teaching and four years teaching K-12, it was time for a change. I felt like I had hit a wall and reached a point from where I was only making a limited impact on students’ lives, and even less on my own personal and professional growth. When I read the position description for my previous role at USGIF, I felt like it had been written for me. I was particularly attracted by the idea of working for a highly respected non-profit organization committed to building, growing, and sustaining innovation in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). I liked the idea of leading and managing a variety of programs. It is a very exciting job, full of learning opportunities, and definitely appealing to my personal work habits.

How has your education/background in geography prepared you for this position?
Geospatial intelligence is a rapidly growing field with a lot of innovation occurring in emerging areas such as neural networks/artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, UAVs/UAS, automation, etc. But geography is at the core of all of it, with GIS, remote sensing, data visualization, human geography, and geospatial data management still representing the foundational competencies needed to become successful in this field. My formal education in geography coupled with my experience as a teacher and curriculum developer have proven extremely valuable in meeting and exceeding the expectations USGIF had for me.

What geographic skills and information do you use most often in your work? What general skills and information do you use most often?
My work is fast-paced and diverse. It requires a strong capacity for adaptation, multi-tasking, quick thinking, and broad knowledge as well an understanding of where to find the information. While not obvious, these are areas where geography skills come in handy. We are great resource finders and tend to be multidisciplinary generalists (human geographers in particular), bridging the gap between “hard” and “soft” sciences. My expertise in geographic principles and geographic technologies were also fundamental in leading, evaluating, and/or approving professional certifications and curriculum development for GEOINT as well as in auditing GEOINT certificate and degree programs at the university level.

Are there any skills or information you need for your work that you did not obtain through your academic training? If so, how/where did you obtain them?
Continuous learning skills are a requirement in today’s workplace. I tend to surround myself with people who are smarter, wiser, and more experienced than I am, and am very fortunate to be in a position to gain that access. Every day is a new learning opportunity for me. My formal education has prepared me to think critically, learn fast, forget fast (smiling), and re-learn. However, I live in such a multidisciplinary community that keeping pace with innovation can become quite challenging. I’ve (finally) come to the conclusion that one cannot be an expert in everything, and that with GEOINT becoming much more connected with areas outside of geography (computer science and engineering, for example) I will not be able to always lead or understand every change in every sub-domain of the discipline. Thus, a wiser me sees a need to try to at least gain basic skills and understanding in those areas (coding, for example) while relying on the real experts when it comes to cross-disciplinary projects. I read a lot, listen to podcasts, participate in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and even use YouTube to stay informed. There are so many resources and opportunities to stay engaged! It’s just a matter of finding the time and managing it properly.

Do you participate in hiring, screening, or training of new employees? If so, what qualities and/or skills do you look for?
Yes. Based on the project, the skills will vary. For example, internally, I’ve just hired a new Educational and Professional Development Coordinator, Christine MacKrell. I really wanted another geographer by my side who understands education and is passionate about it. Christine just graduated from college with a Master of Science degree in Geography from George Washington University and brings a young, fresh look into our work. But when I look for volunteers, I seek skills that would complement ours, that we might lack or have limited knowledge of such as hands-on expertise in remote sensing, geospatial data science and, very importantly, field knowledge of the GEOINT tradecraft.

What advice would you give to someone interested in a job like yours?
This is a niche job, so there are limited opportunities to find something similar. However, it has transferable skills that could be applied in areas such as academic management, industry or government training and professional development, management of curriculum design, events management, and business. The actual job is not what truly matters in my view, but rather the willingness to put yourself out there, network with the right people, seek mentorship, follow up with ideas, identify problems, and seek/find solutions. Do not just reach out to people on LinkedIn and ask how to get a job or seek mentorship without drafting a plan of your own. After getting a job, be the best you can be, take the initiative, try to do things that may seem too ambitious and, if you fail, learn from those failures and try again. It seems like a simple formula, but it is one now many people follow. While I am a strong supporter of work-life balance, the first years of one’s career should involve hard work and efforts to go above and beyond your usual responsibilities, take the initiative, and show what you can do. I’ve been there, done that, and am still doing it.

What is the occupational outlook for career opportunities in your field/organization, esp. for geographers?
GEOINT is a young discipline and a hot field closely connected to work in defense and intelligence. A quick search on Indeed.com returned more than 1,500 jobs specifically including the term “GEOINT.” In comparison, just over 1,000 students have graduated from USGIF-accredited GEOINT programs in the past 10 years. For those with security clearances or interest in obtaining a clearance, ClearanceJobs.com has a portal specifically designed for them. But GEOINT is now moving beyond the defense and intelligence sectors and the competencies are also valuable in areas such as law enforcement, emergency management, environmental science, business/real estate, financial risk assessment, and much more. The field of GEOINT keeps growing but required skills will continue to evolve.

See All Profiles
    Share

Jane Daniels

This profile was originally published in 2012 by Dr. Joy Adams

While growing up as a first-generation Czech American in a small community near Milwaukee, Jane Daniels developed a keen interest in her own heritage as well as the cultural backgrounds and customs of others. However, she didn’t consider heritage as a potential career path until she took a graduate course in historic preservation at The University of Wyoming while pursuing her master’s degree in international studies and environmental conservation. “I instantly saw the overlap between heritage and my undergraduate training in geography and environmental studies,” she says. “I saw it as an opportunity for doing something that was meaningful to me and that I had been trained in.”

Jane’s undergraduate education at The University of Wisconsin-Madison was excellent preparation for her position with Colorado Preservation, Inc., a private, nonprofit statewide historic preservation organization. “As geographers, we have a tendency to look at the world in a broad sense,” she explains. Preparing a proposal explaining why a site should be preserved and developing plans for how it should be interpreted require her to analyze a wide array of data. Jane needs to consider the site’s historical, cultural, political and economic contexts as well as material aspects of the surrounding landscape, such as transportation networks, zoning restrictions, and local architecture. She also needs to carefully evaluate the costs, benefits, opportunities, and limitations of each potential project. In her opinion, professionals with an interdisciplinary background that combines the liberal arts and the natural sciences are particularly well-equipped for this sort of work.

Jane’s position as Director of Preservation Programs encompasses a number of additional responsibilities, including developing funding strategies, financial reporting and budgeting, public relations, and hiring contractors. Cooperating with a broad, diverse group of stakeholders is a key skill, which requires well-developed abilities in oral communication, writing, and public speaking. Jane also got on-the-job training in several important areas that weren’t included in her university curricula, specifically real estate, financial management, and architecture and construction. She strongly recommends that aspiring preservationists seek hands-on experience in the field. Before joining Colorado Preservation, Inc., in 2008, Jane was the Executive Director of the Main Street Program in Laramie, Wyoming, and she previously worked in the private sector as a consultant to rural communities and in the public sector for the City of Madison.

Jane’s ideal job candidates also demonstrate consistency in their interestsand a commitment to pursuing them. On working in the nonprofit sector, she observes: “There’s an opportunity to become more personally invested in whatever work you’re doing. There’s a chance that you’ll fall in love with the buildings and projects you work with, so we tend to work very hard and become passionate.” Volunteer work provides evidence of one’s dedication to the cause as well as tangible experience in various aspects of historic preservation. “There are many opportunities to get involved without applying for a job outright,” Jane reports.

The current housing slump has slowed real estate markets, but this situation has opened doors for historic preservation. With new construction down, there is increased demand for the preservation and restoration of existing structures. Furthermore, growing interest in sustainable development, economic revitalization, and livable communities all have positive implications for the field, which is growing and gaining recognition. As historic properties are increasingly  acknowledged as “worth preserving,” there is more room for people in the field who are specialists like Jane as well as for those who may not be experts just yet, but who can offer relevant knowledge and skills.

See All Profiles
    Share

Carlos Saavedra

Education: Masters Certificate in IT Project Management (Georgetown University), B.S. in Computer Science (University of Sacred Heart, Puerto Rico)

Who is your current employer and what is your job title?
I retired from the federal government about four years ago. Right now, I am a volunteer, and I help nonprofit organizations with their IT and GIS needs. I am helping the Boy Scouts of America at the National and council level, making maps. I am also in a group called Dallas GiveCamp that brings nonprofits together for one weekend to help them create programs and software that they can use, because most of the time they don’t have the resources to do that. I bring in my GIS skills and provide them with the ability to make maps.

For example, I have helped the Turtle Conservancy organization in Florida. They have several turtles around the world with a tracking device on them.  I have taken the coordinates from the satellite and then put them in a map, so the public can see where those turtles have been throughout their life. Last year, I worked with “Water for Life” in Haiti. I kept track of where they had distributed water filters to families, and taught them how to use the software so they can continue with their mission. The other effort that I’m very involved in today is making maps, working with FEMA in regards to Hurricane Maria disaster relief in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico Rises.

What knowledge have you found, in your past education and training, to be important substantively?
Before doing GIS, I used to work as a civilian for the Army in San Francisco as a Computer Programmer Analyst. After that, I worked for the United States Postal Service, in the Data Center in San Mateo as a Computer Systems Analyst/Programmer Sr. My last job was with the Social Security Administration in the Regional Office in Dallas, where I was an IT Project Manager Director, IT Supervisor, Program/Management Analyst, and IT Specialist. In that job during my last 6 or 7 years, I became one of the GIS experts in the agency as I was one of the first analysts to use this technology in the SSA at a national level. Because of my skillset, I was able to pivot from one area to another very easily.

What allowed you to pivot, in terms of some of your coursework or training beyond GIS?
Before I started GIS, I was an IT professional. I started teaching myself GIS, and I went to a formal training and that is when the floodgates opened.

What drew you to GIS?
At the time, I was working for the Social Security Administration. I was looking for other ways to visualize data and I came across this technology. I did my first map, showed it to my managers, and they were impressed. From that point on, I started investing more and more time testing mapping tools. SSA gave me the tools, training and flexibility to work with this technology.

The first “a-ha” moment for me was after I took my first GIS class. I went to San Diego and I remember the teacher was teaching the class and I kept asking questions. I started making a list of all the things that I could accomplish with GIS to help my agency. Right after I finished the class, Hurricane Katrina happened. I did a lot of maps for SSA that had to do with Katrina. The other moment came when I was asked to realign ZIP codes assigned to Social Security offices in each region. That’s when the floodgates pretty much opened.

It was very challenging being among the first in the agency working with this new technology, but I had a great Regional Commissioner and Director who supported me. I got to go to a lot of high-level meetings and conferences and gave presentations to SSA executives and commissioners about GIS. Basically, I was teaching them what GIS was and how it applies to the SSA, using real-life examples.

Could you provide some of these specific examples?
In the Social Security Administration, we have what is called “e-services”, a way for the public to engage with the agency via the internet. I created a map in order to market this initiative to the public. I used demographic and SSA data to data mine age groups, gender, economical status, race, and location. So, in a concrete way we were working on a project that was for the beneficiaries, the people who were receiving money from us to use SSA checking accounts, instead of us mailing that check to them. I came up with a formula that if you make over $55,000 dollars, it’s very likely that you have a checking account. We targeted the ZIP codes to market the e-services into specific areas, instead of the whole nation.

Another example involves natural disasters. The SSA is focused on people who receive financial assistance when disaster happens. So, we have to know when the disaster is coming. With a hurricane, for example, you kind of know when it’s coming and then prepare for the event. In fact, in Texas, a lot of times we delivered the checks ahead of time so the people could have the checks before the hurricane. This is a massive undertaking. In other instances, we have to find ways to distribute the money to these people. During Katrina, we created this kind of debit card. We would put money on the debit cards and distribute them. We also did this in the West Texas explosion, in the Oklahoma tornadoes, in the hurricanes in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, the east coast, and also the tsunami in American Samoa. When the tsunami happened there, I was able to connect with people in American Samoa, and use a map to understand the damages that we were dealing with. Our executives and commissioners in Baltimore were able to see those things and take appropriate action.

Could you talk a little bit about, on a personal level, how GIS connects with your aspirations in your volunteer activities and your sense of civic engagement or responsibility?
Technology impacts us in a positive way and touches almost everything that we are involved in, be it in our lives or in society. You can find a GIS application that can help practically anything. You don’t need to be a GIS or IT/technical person to use this technology, because Esri has made it so easy that you don’t need to have those skills. You can create stuff that maybe a few years back was something that you needed to have an IT person and all of these skills to do. You can visualize data in a map, and I have noticed that when you do that it improves the way you make your decisions.

Now that I am retired, the most fulfilling thing is that I can share how GIS works and educate non-profit organizations on how this tool can change the way they do business. I also tell them that you don’t need a lot of money, you can do it for free. Specifically, in Puerto Rico with the hurricanes, you can still use GIS even when you don’t have an internet connection, and when you get to a place where they have an internet connection, you can sync with the world.

See All Profiles
    Share

Daniel McGlone

Education: Masters in Urban Spatial Analytics (University of Pennsylvania), Bachelors in Geography and Geospatial Imaging (Harrisburg University of Science and Technology)

Could you give us a description of your job and some of the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible?
Azavea is a geospatial software company. We’re a mixture of professional services and products. I am the Senior GIS Analyst the Data Analytics team. I’m the only person at the company with a degree in GIS, so I’m the lead on any task that involves spatial analysis. We have projects that we work on for clients that involve spatial analysis or data analysis that produce maps or reports. We also service other teams in the company, so there might be a team that’s building a geospatial software application, and they might need some data analysis or data prep.

As the Senior GIS Analyst, I am often working any of the ends on projects as well as the analysis. When we’re scoping out a proposal, I’ll work on that and outline the different tasks that we’re going to be doing, the different steps in the geospatial analysis, as well as the outline of which tools and software we’re going to use to complete the analysis. I work hand in hand with the project manager, and we deliver a scope to the client. They’ll approve it or we’ll have negotiations around it, and then we’ll begin working on the project. When a project begins, I’ll work with the project manager to assign tasks and roles. The project manager will be the primary point of contact with the client, and I’ll be working internally with the team, often doing a lot of the analysis work, and finishing off the deliverables and end products and handing them over to the client.

Who are your clients?
Azavea is a B Corporation – that stands for “Benefits”. We’re a for-profit company, but we’ve operated with the mission of a nonprofit, so we work on projects that we think benefit the world and the community we live in. Primarily our clients are nonprofits, foundations, or governments. We also pride ourselves as a civic technology firm. We work on a lot of projects that we think help connect people with decision makers, and help improve the civic sphere that we all live in.

My other job title is Cicero Data Manager. Cicero is a database of elected officials, their contact information, and legislative districts for 9 countries, all 50 states, and about 300 cities throughout the United States. I’m in charge of maintaining all of our data on elected officials. We provide Cicero as a database so our clients, which are normally nonprofits or advocacy organizations who are trying to connect their members with elected officials, can advocate for their cause. We offer our database to them to use internally.

How do you perceive the value and importance of geographic knowledge in performing your work? Could you give us a breakdown of the substantive, conceptual, and procedural geographic knowledge you’ve acquired through your training in geography and how this relates to your job? 

Being the only person with a GIS Analyst job title in my company means that I am the one that people go to when they have questions about how to complete a project with spatial analysis or geographic data.

I would say the substantive and conceptual knowledge are important usually for scoping out projects and thinking about how to complete projects. We often have clients that come to us with limited budgets, or they have a lot of data and they just don’t know what to do with it. Having a conceptual knowledge of the type of tools that you would need to run, or the type of analysis that you would need to do is really important because that helps scope out a project and figure out the solution to their problem. They might have a bunch of data about their clients, and where their clients live, but they might not know that census data exists. We can predict where other clients might be that they haven’t tapped into. Having that kind of conceptual knowledge about the relationship between people and place is really, really important.

Procedural knowledge comes in when we actually win a project. We have to figure out how we are going to go about doing it. It’s also helpful in terms of scoping out projects. We tend to respond to a lot of RFPs for work, and we apply for a lot of small business innovation research (SPIR) grants. We have a technical writer, so she responds to all of these and writes up proposals. Sometimes, she’ll come to me if there is an opportunity through a government agency, so we can figure out if we can complete that project and how exactly we would do it.

To give an example, we recently had an opportunity to do some work in Madagascar. Our client wanted to work with folks on the ground in mapping Madagascar to better connect people with elected officials to promote environmental policy. Our solution was to leverage our Cicero product to get the legislative district boundaries for Madagascar and the elected official data, and then build a mobile app that allows people in Madagascar to connect with their assembly members in the legislature. Also, we could take environmental data for Madagascar to collect land cover change, climate, and other geographic/spatial data and aggregate that into legislative districts. This would actually give people information about land cover change, deforestation, and habitat change in their district so they could inform their elected official or assembly member about what was happening. We had to find the unique solution to that problem, and it was conceptual geographic knowledge that really helped figure that out.

Substantive knowledge definitely comes into play as well. We use census data all the time in our projects. We have to figure out what is the best census data to use, and what’s the best administration level (tracts, block groups, blocks, metropolitan areas). That comes into play with a lot of our projects, including some of our software projects where we have to scope out what is the best way to display this data on a web map (MSA level, block level, tract level, state level).

What have you observed in your work in terms of impacts in your applications and uses of geography and through your organization?
At Azavea, our bottom line is that we want our projects to have a positive impact on the community. A few years ago, we worked with the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children. They are an organization that advocates for higher quality child care across the Philadelphia region. We took data on childcare institutions in the city of Philadelphia and ranked the quality of childcare at these institutions. We looked at the quality of childcare and also the risk factors or negative impacts on children in Philadelphia, and then we ranked and scored city council districts using that information. We created these targeted reports that showed the city council how they were ranked against other city council districts. It enabled the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children to advocate for increased funding for childcare. That was really powerful, as the city council ended up awarding the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children $500,000. They also got a matching grant from the William Penn Foundation. They ended up getting a million dollars to improve the quality of childcare and education for young people in Philadelphia.

That kind of model of creating, aggregating, scoring and ranking data by legislative or council district has been effective for us for a lot of different causes. Last year, I was an expert witness for a federal court case on gerrymandering here in Pennsylvania. We had an organization that was filing a lawsuit to get the congressional districts in Pennsylvania overturned as a gerrymander. They needed some mapping done to prove that some districts were gerrymandered. In terms of this court case, I was brought on and mapped out all of the congressional districts. I also used data on a partisan voting index at the voting precinct level to show that the districts were gerrymandered. The evidence and the data that was used in our case were used in the subsequent court case at the state level, which actually won and overturned the congressional districts. I can’t say that our case was successful as we were turned down in federal court in a 2-1 decision, but the subsequent state case in the state court did end up winning.

What is it about geography that inspires you and helps you pursue your life aspirations?
I have been interested in geography and maps for my entire life. I love to travel and see new places in the world, and knowing about geography and having that understanding has helped me become a better world traveler. I feel that my deep interest and understanding of geography has also helped me become a better, more engaged citizen politically. Geography gives me a better understanding of different places and different people. In terms of my professional life, I had a lot of different options. Underlying all of these options was a strong interest in geography, and I felt that GIS was the way to go.

If you could think back to that undergraduate experience you had at Harrisburg, when did you have that ‘a-ha’ moment with geography?
One of these moments occurred when I was in an undergraduate course. I have always been pretty interested in urban planning and considered it as a potential career opportunity. When I first discovered the extent to which GIS could be used in planning and transportation analysis, I became even more interested in it. I worked on a project where I mapped out a potential commuter rail line between Harrisburg and Lancaster, and I used GIS to figure out how many people lived within certain distances of different branches of railroads for potential community rail lines. It was all very conceptual, and it was all very basic, but it was then that I realized “wow, this is really powerful.”

As someone who has been interested in politics all my life, another moment was when I first realized that I can connect the dots with GIS data in terms of redistricting and drawing legislative district lines. There’s not enough discussion about how, as a GIS Analyst, I can help make redistricting and drawing of lines more accessible to everyday people. At Azavea, I had the opportunity to work on one of our projects called District Builder, which is an online, web-based tool for drawing legislative districts. It was kind of a moment when I realized “wow, GIS is so important and fundamental to how we vote,” and that was definitely an ‘a-ha’ moment for me in realizing what I wanted to do as a GIS analyst and as a geographer.

See All Profiles
    Share

Bruce Mitchell

Education: B.A. in Philosophy and Religion (Eckerd College), Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Science and Policy (University of South Florida)

Describe your job/position and some of the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible.
We’re a Washington, D.C. based nonprofit organization engaged in advocacy, research, and policy analysis centered on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. NCRC looks at investment activity within US cities, particularly mortgage and small business lending, and access to financial services. We’re very interested in the issue of equity and wealth building for low and moderate income Americans, so we focus on evaluating how banks are providing financial access for individuals in cities and rural areas. Our work is not enforcement, but we point-out where banks can do better in their performance and make recommendations to improve policy decisions and regulation.

Where do you draw your data from, and how do you use the data in your work?
We primarily use publically available datasets. For instance, to look at mortgage activity, we use data gathered as part of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Additionally, under the Community Reinvestment Act, banks are obligated to report data regarding their small business lending, so we use both of these datasets to study lending activity. Data on bank branch locations and deposits are available from the FDIC. We also use U.S. Census data quite a bit to define low to moderate income areas and determine where minority communities are located and what sort of financial access and access to capital these groups have. We’ve also done some interesting studies using historic sources, like the HOLC residential security maps, commonly referred to as “redlining maps” which identified lending risk by neighborhood using theories from Homer Hoyt and the Chicago School of urban geography. We looked at the HOLC classifications of neighborhoods done in the 1930’s to compare the demographics and economic status of the neighborhoods today. It is startling how little demographic and economic change there has been in these neighborhoods. Eighty years later and they are still mostly minority and low income. Also, we are releasing a report on gentrification and displacement and their impact on capital flow and neighborhood change.

How do you perceive the value and importance of geographic knowledge to perform the work that you just described?
A geographer brings a distinct perspective to this work. Our work at NCRC engages with the problems of urban geography, looking at neighborhood change, and how this corresponds with the spatial flow of capital within cities. We also examine capital access at different scales, from census tracts up to metro areas and states. A multi-scalar understanding of geography is critical to what we do. We use spatial statistics and spatial analysis to examine bank branch access and proximity to various communities. An economist might approach these issues in a non-spatial way and fail to see the relationship of neighborhood demographics on issues like proximity and financial access for communities. Much of our work involves mapping. Maps provides an immediate spatial awareness to people, helping them understand how lending and investment patterns differ between communities. When you combine maps with visualizations of statistical and other quantitative analysis, it is a very powerful way of providing information to advocates and policymakers.

Can you reflect and maybe give an example or two of some impacts that this work has had in the community?
What we’re engaged in is very close to critical cartography. We’re looking at inequitable access to capital, and using maps and data to encourage banks to meet their obligation to do a better job in underserved communities. This results in what are called “community benefit agreements”, involving community groups, banks, and federal agencies. The Community Reinvestment Act impacts banks when they are trying to achieve a merger and there’s a problem with their performance in low to moderate income and underserved communities. Often we are able to look at their performance and encourage increased commitments to lending and community development efforts. Some of these community benefit agreements amount to billions of dollars in commitments by banks. We’ve had a number of community benefit agreements in the past two years which have substantially increased the amount of investment in underserved communities by banks.

We also work on grants. For instance, working with the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury to assess the impact of their Bank Enterprise Award (BEA) program. Under a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant, we’re currently looking at discrimination in small business lending. This involves rigorous testing of banks using prospective customers of different race and gender profiles to assess how customer service interactions take place. It’s a very innovative area of market research with civil rights implications. Our goal in all of these activities is to increase equity in financial access for all Americans.

How does your work connect to your aspirations, both as a private citizen and as a professional in your field? 
I enjoy both the quantitative work and the mapping work that we do. Additionally, seeing how issues in geography, that might seem theoretical, profoundly impact our communities. Redlining and the HOLC maps which arose partly out of early theories of urban geography like filtering and invasion/succession for instance. Today it is interesting to see how urban planning theories, like Richard Florida’s “creative class” are playing out through processes like neighborhood gentrification. It’s very rewarding to engage in policy issues that directly affect economic equity throughout the United States, and to be in a position that in a small way promotes greater equity for all Americans.

Based on your prior educational experiences, when did you discover geography? Can you think of a specific moment that changed your perspective about different issues, civic responsibilities, and the potential of geography to be of value in society?
The initial “hook” into geography for me was cartography. I was interested in the revolution in cartographic science that was taking place with applications like ArcGIS, enabling more people to engage in mapmaking. Beyond that, the theoretical aspects of geography matched well with my previous education in philosophy and the social sciences. Unifying the quantitative aspects of spatial analysis with my social sciences orientation has been rewarding and interesting. Outside of my job, I have done research and publications on environmental justice issues with Jayajit Chakraborty. I’ve looked at areas where there is inequitable exposure to urban heat, which I describe as an issue of thermal inequity within US cities, and also cities around the world, like in India. I use spatial statistics to determine whether there is a relationship between socially vulnerable communities and greater exposure to the urban heat island effect and climate change.

See All Profiles
    Share

Hope Morgan

Education: Bachelor’s in Geography, Concentration in Earth Science (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Certifications: GISP, Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM), Professional Land Surveyor (PLS) in North Carolina

Describe your job/position and some of the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible in this position.
I have an extremely interesting job. I’ve been here for eleven years and it has morphed quite extensively. When I began I was the GIS manager and I managed all geospatial information that came into our office for either emergency response, floodplain mapping, or other applications through risk management. I am now the IT manager and GIS and IT work closely together, so my responsibilities include all applications including data with spatial association used inside of the risk management office. One of the biggest projects that I worked on was managing the collection of LiDAR data for the entire state of North Carolina, working with many federal, state, and local agencies, specifically the Department of Transportation. Hopefully by the end of this year we’ll have an entire surface to use for the state. Another was statewide collection of orthophotography in 2010 for the entire state.

Could you talk a little more about how those resources are being applied for risk management in the state? It sounds like a fascinating position that you’re in that’s gone through a lot of changes.
In this field, we are constantly changing, constantly working to keep up with new technologies. We are working on a new project where they are processing 30 points per meter LiDAR, which is a massive amount of data. It requires updated software that can maintain and visualize that information so the public can use all of the information that we’ve gathered. The public in North Carolina has worked hard to make sure that they can utilize all of this information. It’s amazing to watch as people use the data for new and different things.

What substantive geographic knowledge is important and useful to know in your position? For example, this includes knowledge and understanding of geographic terminology and substantive concepts (e.g., alluvial plain, metropolitan area, ethnic group, tertiary economy, coniferous forest, geologic fault, etc.).
I’m North Carolina-centric because I was born and raised here and I work for the state, so most of my working knowledge base of geography is based on North Carolina. With the LiDAR dataset, I’m working with many groups: forestry, Department of Transportation, commerce, property mappers that are creating plans at the local level. It helps to be able to understand the terminology that goes with each one of these groups. As we work through the different geography requirements for each one of these projects and processes, knowing the terminology is very important. The more you know, the easier it is to have a conversation. When I talk to students, I tell them, you don’t have to know everything, you’re going to learn a lot as you go, but you need that baseline of understanding so that when people start throwing terms at you, you  understand what direction to go in and what research you need to do. One of the big projects we do is the flood plain mapping program, so I work with engineers quite often. I have learned more about hydrography, hydrology, water surface elevation, and other things that are relevant to this specific type of program. I use geography terms on a daily basis, often times without realizing I’m doing it.

When you started out in your job, coming out of your degree program, did you find that there were areas where you felt a little underprepared or needed additional training? Did you ever think “I wish I had more of that when I was a sophomore, or a junior, or a senior, in college,” or did you feel comfortable just learning as you went?
I wish I would have paid a little more attention as a student. In school, it’s difficult because you’re in the middle of these classes, you’re tired, and you’re trying to get all of this stuff done. It’s important to try to stay focused and listen to what’s going on because every single thing that you do in school and every single class you take has some piece of information that you probably need to take with you.

In terms of how you’re working with technologies, in connection with some of those substantive areas of geography that you’ve been leaning on in your position, can you talk a little about how these connect or fit together? What are some applications that are being used now for risk management in the state and how is that department working with these technologies?
On the emergency management side, we try to forecast what is going to happen during major events. We look at everything from hurricanes to nuclear boundaries to tornado paths to winter storms, and the biggest thing we are looking for is what’s in the way. If there is a flood, we look at who and how much is going to be in the way and what kind of damage is it going to cause. With storm surge, we try to figure out if the storm is going to cause some impact to the structure of the coast, such as erosion. In North Carolina, we are often looking at the Outer Banks and how they are impacted by storm surge. If the storm is going to run into structures, we look at water surface elevation and compare that to the building footprints to see how the water will impact the structures. That’s an example of how we use these technologies daily. We’re walking it all the way through a process from the physical to the impact to the dollar damage, and then we consider the people and the community to see how they can recover from this incident.

How would you describe the impacts of your work in this area of risk management on the state and in communities? Can you cite any specific examples in terms of positive impacts?
Emergency management is built out of responders, so it is a group of people focused on solving problems like rescuing and helping people recover. Many people in emergency management are not used to using datasets to make decisions. We have worked very closely with our team members to answer questions ahead of events, planning makes it easier for them to respond to incidents that are occurring. After planning we automate as much as possible so that the answers the teams need automatically show up in our systems.  Hurricane Matthew in 2016 was a good example. A large part of Hurricane Matthew was rain, and it rained a massive amount over a large portion of North Carolina. What we were able to do was use database decision making to respond to flooded areas. Our engineers could tell us when the water was going to arrive based on gages, so we knew where to send our limited resources as well as responders. I’m really proud of those first responders for working with us and taking on this new technology.

What is it about geography that inspires you and connects with your aspirations, both as a private citizen and as a professional in your field?
In college, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I ended up looking at the courses I had taken and realizing that geography was where I had spent most of my time. I got my first job at a photogrammetry company after visiting it during one of my college classes. So my career began in photogrammetry and remote sensing, where I was working with orthophotography and planimetric collection. I am a spatial person, so I understand through visualization and pictures, and this work just really clicked for me. I guess that job was sort of my first a-ha moment that basically led me to this very hopeful path, where I try to have a lot of impact.

As I moved to state government, I have been so lucky to work with different groups of people that are doing amazing work in the state. We have a vast amount of work that’s being done with different imagery at the local level, day-to-day. And then on the emergency management side, with the ability to help during an event, we know that this information saves lives by helping us move people out of the way. We have been able to evacuate hospitals and jails and move towns that basically were going to be underwater, and we got those people out ahead of time.  I am very lucky to be a part of that and do something that’s really helping North Carolina.

The other thing that is a big piece of what I want to do is make everybody’s job easier. I feel like this data and this understanding of how this information is built really does make things more efficient and makes decisions easier.

Is there anything else you’d like to share, in terms of general advice?
My advice is to use the data that is provided by others. I really push to use the data that is available, for universities to take this data research and learn from it. They should learn how it works and make it do new and better things because it is a base set of information that can change how people think. Wherever you are, you can use the data that is available and learn how that data can make a change in how people see the world.

See All Profiles
    Share

Amanda Sankey

Education: B.S. in Resource and Environmental Studies, Concentration in Geography (Texas State University, San Marcos), Minors in Communications and Geology (Texas State University, San Marcos)

Describe your job and the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible as an Environmental Consultant at Crouch Environmental Services, Inc.
Crouch Environmental is a small company of about 18 employees, divided into two departments: the Communications department and the Environmental department. I am responsible for managing projects relating to both teams.

In support of our Communications team, I help facilitate public meetings, deliver presentations, and produce high-quality materials featuring content that directly relates to environmental issues and events happening in the Gulf Coast region of Texas. This requires expertise in developing appropriate messaging tailored to audiences of varying backgrounds.

In support of our Environmental team, I secure different types of environmental permits so that my clients comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and other state and federal regulations. This requires a working knowledge and expertise across a wide range of environmental legislation. It also requires an understanding of hydric soils, native vegetation of the Texas gulf coastal plains, hydrological indicators, and understanding and abiding by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers policies and procedures.

What substantive geographic knowledge is important and useful to know in your position? For example, this includes knowledge and understanding of geographic terminology and substantive concepts (e.g., alluvial plain, metropolitan area, ethnic group, tertiary economy, coniferous forest, geologic fault, etc.)
When I started out doing fieldwork for the environmental team, I used geographic terminology when mapping rivers and streams and characterizing biological environments. In this work I regularly used technical terms and concepts such as bank width, bank steps, ordinary high water mark, sediment sorting, discerning forest communities (a successional community or a mature forest), identifying types of forests and herbaceous communities (such as deciduous or hardwood pine forests), identifying active margins and passive margins, measuring riparian buffers, and identifying contours and benchmarks.

As I have integrated into our communications team, I have found an understanding of public needs relating to environmental justice, metropolitan areas, and limited English proficiency (LEP) to be crucial in serving our clients, as we often explain geographic concepts relating to water quality, flooding, watersheds, and drainage basins to the general public.

What conceptual geographic knowledge is important and useful to know in your position? For example, this includes using “big ideas” in geography such as location, place, region, interconnection, spatial relationships, etc., to think about people, places, and environments, from the local to the global.
When operating under the Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act, I rely heavily on my understanding of concepts relating to hydrologic flow in river basins. When I’m determining flow direction of waterways in my study area, I will often use clues in the landscape, including topographic gradients and dendritic drainage patterns in order to determine what is considered “upstream” and “downstream.” Signs of sediment or refuse collecting in the landscape can be really helpful when I am investigating a landscape.

Other spatial concepts I learned in environmental geography, such as eutrophication, help me figure out where certain wildlife species may be located. For example, if you have a lower dissolved oxygen content in certain areas, you are going to have different types of fish species present. Metrics like dissolved oxygen or presence of e. coli can also help identify potential contaminants present. These concepts are geographic in nature as they relate to the effect of drainage patterns in the landscape.

What procedural geographic knowledge is important and useful to know in your position? For example, this includes spatial analysis with a GIS or other geospatial technology, designing a geographic inquiry and research study, collecting spatial data in the field, etc.
When I was in school, I actually had no intention of learning ArcGIS; however, it was a requirement for my degree at Texas State. I think the fact that I had a basic GIS class may have been what ultimately secured my position at Crouch Environmental when I first started interviewing with them. When I applied for a position at Crouch, their GIS person had just left for another company, and they asked if I could learn this skill quickly to take his place. Without that class, I’m not sure if I would have been able to initially land this job. This skill is extremely helpful to have in your arsenal regardless of what you plan to do with it.

As far as fieldwork goes, prior to heading to the field, the lead field biologist will determine how we will conduct the study based on the size and shape of the area. Our team of biologists will measure the edge of wetlands and the ordinary high water mark along streams by collecting data points with our GPS unit. Once they return from the field, the data is transferred from the GPS unit into ArcGIS. Our GIS specialist then maps out exactly where that stream was located based off of our field data.

In your time at Crouch Environmental, can you give specific examples of where geography really made a difference, and had an impact through the work of the company?
Absolutely! What’s great about working at Crouch Environmental and the industry in general is the type of clients that we get to work with. We get to work a lot with public entities, like Harris County Engineering Department and Harris County Flood Control District, on a regular basis. These entities rely on our environmental studies, public involvement and facilitation, and coordination with leading agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers in order to build public infrastructure projects such as roadways, utility lines, and storm water management detention basins. We get to help expedite environmentally conscious development that is crucial for supporting safe and efficient travel throughout Harris County.

What is it about geography that inspires you and connects with your aspirations, both as a private citizen and as a professional in your field?
As a professional I really love the idea of identifying the least environmentally damaging, practical alternative that still allows people to meet their needs. It’s an evolving, exciting challenge that I get to partake in every day as an environmental consultant. Development is going to happen no matter what, and I get to help make sure that it happens in an environmentally consciousness manner. The credibility and weight that comes behind that is so important!

On a personal level I love that the biology side of my work is geographic in nature. It is a constant reminder of how organisms within the same space all impact each other. My understanding of geographic concepts allows me to take all the details from the raw data that we collect and put them into the bigger picture. The work we do is so important because it directly affects the quality of the streams and water that we drink every day. It amazes me how much we are affected by the world around us and by the different chemicals you’ll find wherever you are.

When did you first make the connection between geography and career possibilities and opportunities?
I first got the idea about going into geography from my father, who also has a geography degree (he’s actually in my field too!). I saw geography as a career possibility early on, but I didn’t quite connect with it until college. In my environmental geography class, I had the opportunity to choose an environmental problem to research and present to the class. I studied the Chinese tallow tree, an invasive species common to the Houston area. From this experience, I learned that invasive species can pose major problems to native environments, and that these problems can be exacerbated by poor environmental management. I realized when I was doing that presentation and putting it all together that I could actually address some of these issues as an environmental consultant. Ever since then, it’s kind of been my path. It’s been three and a half years since I graduated and started with Crouch and I’m still happy to be here.

Beyond your work life, do you ever use your knowledge of geography to inform other aspects of your behavior or your personal life in terms of lifestyle, driving, public transit, shopping, etc.? Are there any other ways you find geography to have a personal value?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! I can’t say that enough! One big example that stands out in my mind was the fallout from Hurricane Harvey. This was a really scary event for everyone last year! Something I learned from my water resources class was how to pick where to live to minimize damage from flooding. I knew which public databases to go to and how to access information on floodplains and drainage to select a home with the best possible chance of staying dry during a major flooding event. I’d like to think this was a contributing factor in my home not incurring flood damage from Hurricane Harvey.

See All Profiles
    Share

Douglas Gress

Education: Ph.D. in Geography (State University of New York at Buffalo), M.B.A. in International Business (Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea), B.A. in International Studies (State University of New York at Buffalo), Diploma in Korean Language and Culture (The Defense Language Institute, CA)

What attracted you to a career in education?
I grew up in a home where there was a lot of emphasis on the benefits of higher education. As a way to get me interested in university, my parents had my older brother take me to an economics class at his university. I remember the professor of the lecture was engaging, organized, and incredibly knowledgeable, and I thought to myself that was something I might like to do one day. Even while serving in the army, I noticed how some of my peers were better teachers than others, and in university I constantly took note of who my best professors were and their qualities. I was an active student, so I appreciated a great class and involved guidance, and I tried to learn from them. Years later, working first on my M.B.A. thesis and then my Ph.D. dissertation, I became hooked on the research process, and took advantage of opportunities to actually teach over the course of my studies.  So in the end, a career in higher education meant being able to do research that interests me and being able to teach, too.  Bingo! Perfect job for me.  I never saw myself doing the same thing every day, day in and day out.

How has your education/background in geography prepared you for this position?
I’m an American, yet I’ve spent half of my life as an expat and my entire professional career has been overseas. Geography has greatly informed my experience. Some topics within economic geography, such as exchange rates or investment, have provided me with useful information on living overseas long term. In broader terms, geography’s approach to culture and how organizations and institutions across space are impacted has been extremely valuable.

Had I not received my Ph.D. in economic geography from SUNY Buffalo, I obviously would not have the job I do today. Formally, it was a top-notch program that provided me with a great education from some of the leading names in the field. Informally, I owe much to the professors that mentored me for their great advice and early career guidance.

What geographic skills and information do you use most often in your work? What general skills and information do you use most often in your work?
The geographic skills I use at work differ depending on whether I’m engaging with undergraduate or graduate students. In undergraduate classes, you teach about your discipline and its roots, and how to tie theory and geographic perspectives to students’ lives and the world around them today. Graduate classes allow you to delve into more advanced theory and application.

General skills that I consider important would be classroom preparation and administration. Otherwise, I’ve learned how to do things more ‘the Korean way’ over the years. Social skills are eminently important here, but it’s a high context culture, so there are a lot of unwritten norms and rules, and a lot of communication takes place ‘between the lines’.  This informs both teaching and how I perform my role in the department.

Are there any skills or information you need for your work that you did not obtain through your academic training? If so, how/where did you obtain them?
I was fortunate to have had a background in Korean language and culture prior to starting my academic career here, but not everyone is as fortunate.  If you find yourself interested in working in a particular country, I’d urge you to begin studying the language and culture as well in advance as possible. I’m not saying you can’t succeed working abroad without this background, but it certainly makes life easier and more enjoyable.

I wish I had taken graduate courses in teaching. Over the years I’ve developed what I hope is an effective teaching style, but why re-invent the wheel? Education courses provide an opportunity to teach and, more importantly, to be critiqued.  I learned via observation and while working my way up the academic food chain.  Students pick up on whether or not you have a passion for what you teach, and I hope that has helped me over the years as well.  I love what I do.

Do you participate in hiring, screening, or training of new employees? If so, what qualities and/or skills do you look for?
Yes.  I look for both hard and soft qualities in a candidate. Hard qualities include having the requisite Ph.D. and publications, and that goes for even early career hires. I also look at research agendas to see if they’re a good fit with the department. Will they be able to engage and advise our student body? Beyond that, I look for verifiable teaching experience in the target discipline and some demonstration of service. In terms of soft skills, I look for people who are personable and motivated. It sounds cliché, but we look for team players, and that is especially critical in Korea where there is a decidedly collectivist culture.

What do you find most interesting/challenging/inspiring about your work?
The great thing about economic geography is its breadth. My interests and passions have guided my research and teaching. I work at a huge university with students and scholars from all over the world, and they’re all doing interesting things.  I’m always going to special lectures or engaging with visiting students and faculty.

The biggest challenge is probably being able to maintain a work-life balance while staying on top of your diversified workload. You want to be productive, but you don’t want to get burned out.  In my case, one challenge might be that I do a lot of my work and day-to-day interactions in Korean, though I might not consider it a challenge per se.   Challenging? Sure, but it keeps the days interesting and it forces me to keep working on my Korean.

By and large, inspiration for me comes from teaching. It’s amazing when undergrads get interested in economic geography and start making connections to what we do in class and the world around them, when you see those wheels turning.  Having been at SNU for quite some time now, watching the development of grad students has also been inspirational. The increasing depth of their critical thinking ability on one hand, and then the development of their writing over time on the other.

What advice would you give to someone interested in a career in academia?
The market has changed a bit since I first started.  I would say that if you want to become a professor at an R1 university, start managing your career when you begin graduate school. Don’t just take the requisite classes, get cross-training as well.  Pick up a GIS certificate, for example, or bone up on a different sub-discipline (e.g. spatial statistics, urban geography, etc.) by taking a few extra courses. You might wonder why, but look at the ads coming out these days. Budgets are tight, so a lot of departments are looking for scholars who can wear multiple hats.

Also, be realistic and be ready to move. If you’re serious about becoming a professor at an R1 school, mission number one is to get that first tenure track job. A post-doc is all well and good, but it won’t start your tenure clock, and statistics tell us that the majority of the tenure track jobs go to those either on ABD status, or who graduated one to two years prior. If an opportunity presents itself, it may not be directly related to your research or teaching interests, it may not be at an R1 school, it may not even be in a geography department, and it might not be located where you ultimately want to settle down. Most professors I know didn’t begin and end their careers at the same university, and most have worked in more than one state or country. Working your way up often means moving around a bit.

What is the occupational outlook for career opportunities in your field/organization, esp. for geographers?
It seems that the academic job market has bounced back a bit from the trough it hit after the economic meltdown. Still, a lot of the jobs are adjunct or visiting positions, and for any given hiring season, there are more applicants than there are positions. Many jobs are also requiring increased teaching loads, but not cutting back on the publishing expectations. Your first job might not be a dream job. I think the odds are better for anyone with multiple skill sets (e.g. economic geography plus GIS or urban geography).  There’s a glut of highly qualified, well published early career scholars from around the world, so you need to set yourself apart somehow.

See All Profiles
    Share

Jeremy Tasch

Education: Ph.D. in Geography (Clark University), M.S. in Energy Management and Policy (University of Pennsylvania), B.A. in Geography (Temple University)

What attracted you to a career in education?
Just prior to completing my undergraduate degree, I was hired by the Geography Field Division of the US Census Bureau.  This was my first full-time opportunity in cartography and data handling; but shortly after I felt that working as a consultant might be a better fit for me. I worked part-time in a city planning position and completed a graduate degree in energy management, and then was employed as an energy consultant. Working as a consultant allowed me to work throughout the US, but as it turned out I was more interested in exploring international employment opportunities, and decided to pursue a Ph.D. for the opportunity to conduct international field research. Five months after completing my international doctoral fieldwork I was employed as a country director for an international NGO. For about five years I was involved in educational reform, civil society development, and youth empowerment programs.  But it was through my work with individuals at all levels — from high school students to ministers of education — that I understood the advice I had received from a geography professor years previously. In response to a question regarding why he chose to teach rather than do something “practical,” he replied, “Education promotes change, development and emancipation.” I realized that education has the power to bring change to individuals and society, and I was convinced to return to the classroom as a professor.

How has your education/background in geography prepared you for this position?
Geography taught me that knowledge is best understood outside of the classroom.  My interests led me to conduct research in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Italy, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Norway, and throughout Russia. Geography helped me develop a geographical imagination, a way to ask questions spatially and identify (potential) solutions. I honed my geographic imagination through field research in Pacific Russia, followed by a professional position in the Caucasus, from where I moved to Alaska. I not only taught in Alaska, but also helped create new programs and departments in geography, environmental studies, and international studies. Now at Towson, I have been returning to the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Pacific Russia — likely more often than the administration might prefer.

What geographic skills and information do you use most often in your work? What general skills and information do you use most often in your work?
I use a wide variety of tools to communicate geographic information, ranging from the as-expected maps, statistics, and reports to TV, the Internet, and other types of media. And to encourage other geographers who do not use GIS, I’ll mention that the last time I explicitly used GIS in a job was while a grad student working part time with the USGS.  As this list conveys, the differences between what is geographic and what is “general” can be quite small. It speaks to the need for geography to be positioned as a foundational component in the general education of everyone — a place geography actually does occupy in many countries. Competency in more than one language, though generally taken for granted by non-US based geographers, is another critical skill that is often overlooked in the US. I think back to a recent discussion on the skills expected of our geography majors in which only a minority of our faculty tried to convince the majority of the importance of language proficiency as a skill. I would have had a very different career were it not for a high school counselor who first advised me to study a second language.

Are there any skills or information you need for your work that you did not obtain through your academic training? If so, how/where did you obtain them?
As an ABD, I was one of three candidates invited for an interview, but I wasn’t hired. The employer gently explained that the other finalists demonstrated evidence of supervisory and program management experience.  Although I had made it a point to supplement my core geography classes with electives while a student, I was disappointed to realize that this was inadequate for this professional position.  It was through other positions that I learned skills such as financial management, personnel supervision, diplomacy and negotiation, program administration, public outreach and marketing.  These skills might not seem to align with geography, but I credit my background in geography for giving me the transferrable skills to manage programs, to help connect with international audiences, and to engage in different cultures.  My education in geography generally helped me to coordinate programs in a manner that strengthened relationships among diverse stakeholders, and my knowledge of cartography specifically helped me to communicate to a broad constituency using a variety of media.

Do you participate in hiring, screening, or training of new employees? If so, what qualities and/or skills do you look for?
I was involved in hiring and training while serving as the director of an international NGO.   I sought skills in foreign language proficiency, written and oral communication, experience working with international organizations, and the ability to manage one’s time and meet budget guidelines. More subjectively, I looked for collegiality and humor, understated confidence, buy-in for networked management, creativity, and flexibility.

What do you find most interesting/challenging/inspiring about your work?
Geography is a calling both inside and outside of the classroom. My work has allowed me to share ideas, communicate concepts, and encourage and participate in fascinating conversations through many roles. I will admit, with a bit of reflection and some nostalgia, that my daily professional work outside of academia seemed more dynamic: The range of issues with which I dealt and that impacted others’ lives seemed more immediate; and the tangible results of my projects were inspirations to myself and, I hope, to others.

What advice would you give to someone interested in a career in academia?
The path into academia is somewhat straightforward, though not necessarily easy. Practicing geography outside of academia is less so. My first advice (for those thinking outside academia) is to get a copy of the small, but extremely helpful book, Practicing Geography.  That book offers a wealth of websites, guidance, ideas and strategies to pursue a career in geography in diverse and surprising ways.  I would also request vacancy announcements from services such as USAJobs.gov, Idealist.org, and from specific organizations that operate in regions and specialties of interest.

What is the occupational outlook for career opportunities in your field/organization, esp. for geographers?
My answer is trite, but if a geographer is curious and analytical in applying their knowledge to real-world problem solving effectively, then career opportunities are excellent. But with a caveat — as graduates take on debt, a larger family, and material belongings it may become more difficult to accept some of the entry-level international positions that require a lighter suitcase.

See All Profiles
    Share

Caitlin Kontgis

Education: Ph.D. in Geography (University of Wisconsin-Madison), M.S. in Environmental Health Sciences (University of California-Berkeley), B.A. in Geography (University of California-Santa Barbara)

Describe your career path following your Ph.D. up to your current position. What are the range of tasks / responsibilities for which you’ve been responsible in the positions you’ve held?
I submitted my dissertation in December 2015, but I had already begun at a company called Descartes Labs, a startup that analyzes petabytes of satellite imagery. We have a team of software engineers that deals with ingesting the data, correcting it, and building a Python-based platform to access it. I’m on the Applied Science team, and we’re using the data to generate models or maps of various land cover types. Some of this is client driven; for example, a client might come to us and want to know where all of the corn in the United States is and what the yields will be at the end of the year.

We have a pretty wide variety of clients. We work with the U.S. government, and we have a particularly cool project with DARPA assessing food security in the Middle East and North Africa. We have also worked with Cargill – they’re interested in agriculture, obviously, and we also have other sorts of commodities clients. We’ve also done work with non-profits and have contacts at World Resources Institute and National Geographic.

The project that I’m currently working on involves using radar data to map rice across Asia, so it’s sort of a return to what I was doing in my Ph.D. I started at Descartes while I was still finishing my dissertation. I was looking at a lot of jobs as I was finishing, but I wasn’t really finding jobs that seemed like the right fit or where I wanted to be geographically. I Googled “private sector jobs with remote sensing” and this small company came up – the company was only 10 people at the time. I interviewed and really liked New Mexico, the people, and the team, so I decided I’d give it a shot and have really enjoyed it.

The job has evolved since I began working here. When I started it was only about a dozen people, and there wasn’t much structure on the team. Now we’ve grown to about 75 people, so we’ve had to get quite a bit of structure in place. I lead our solutions efforts; on the Applied Science team, we’ll have customers come to the Sales team and pitch an idea, and I help the Sales team assess whether or not the idea is technically feasible. We now have a proposal process in place, where we’ll do a more in-depth review of the project to see how we would approach it, roughly how much time it would take, how many people it would require, and then go from there. I lead the team that is doing all of the solutions work and then work with the Sales team to make sure we’re not committing to something we can’t do.

Can you talk a little more about the analysis you perform – you mentioned that it’s not just limited to the U.S., correct?
Yes, we have the entire historical Landsat archive, as well as global MODIS data and European Space Agency Sentinel data across the globe. When the company was just getting off the ground our initial project was trying to predict corn yields in the United States earlier in the season and with higher accuracy than the USDA, which we did, and that’s how we got our first couple of customers. From there, we’ve looked at a variety of applications including forestry, construction, and different types of agriculture across the entire globe.

The backbone of the company is the computing systems that we have. The team that started the company came from Los Alamos National Labs, and they were experts in high performance computing. They picked up on remote sensing quite easily, then built a system that can process data very efficiently so we can scale analyses really, really rapidly. I think I processed all of the data for Asia and ran that model in less than six hours for the entire continent. That’s really the powerhouse of the company.

How has your education/background in geography prepared you for this position?
I think the thing that jumps out most obviously is having a good grasp of procedural geographic knowledge. We work with spatial data and massive amounts of satellite imagery on a regular basis, so having a thorough understanding of these kinds of data is critical to what we’re doing on the job. For example, we have a project monitoring food security in the Middle East and North Africa. Ideally, we would just choose a random assortment of points and label all of them across the region to train and test our models. However, that’s not feasible given constraints on how you can move across the area. For instance, there may not be road networks, or you might be trespassing onto private land. Thinking about how to best use the data given, that it might be quite linear and not indicative of the entire region that you may want to be sampling, is very important.

I think understanding that these issues exist and being able to creatively brainstorm how to overcome them is pretty critical for what we do, as a lot of clients that we work with may not necessarily understand those concepts as thoroughly. They’ll often come to you with a vector dataset of points, and not understand why you can’t use those points right off the bat. In order to communicate that information to clients in a way that makes sense and is easy for them to understand, you need to have a pretty deep understanding of the datasets and what’s possible or isn’t possible given the constraints of the imagery that’s being collected.

How does your knowledge of the region under analysis – for example, the landscape characteristics or the cultural/economic geography of the area – inform your overall approach in how you use these technologies and how you analyze the environments?
It’s a huge component of what we do. The most obvious example I can think of is just the climate of a region. When I was working in Vietnam during my Ph.D., I was relying on Landsat data, but for six months out of the year, you don’t get a single scene where you can actually see the landscape because of the monsoons. At Descartes, it’s been much easier because we have all of the radar data from the European Space Agency on their Sentinel-1 satellite. Radar data can be difficult to work with, but in regions like the monsoonal tropics, it’s the only way you’re going to get data throughout the whole year.  Having that knowledge of where you’re actually studying and understanding those climatic impacts is crucial.

Also, there are geo-political considerations. Looking at the tariffs that are now being imposed by the United States – is China going to start sourcing all of its soybeans from Brazil now? Keeping track of that and understanding how that might affect some of the models that we’re running is critical in having a deeper understanding of the dynamics that we’re trying to study and better understand. Because some of it you can’t just explain with the satellite imagery, you have to have a broader view of what’s going on globally with politics and trade.

What have you observed in your career in terms of positive impacts in the community or for your clients? How has geography enhanced the work of your organization?
In terms of the organization, I mentioned that the company was very small when I came on and most folks on the team had a background in astrophysics or computer engineering. It was amazing and pretty humbling what they were able to do without formal training in remote sensing or geography. However, being armed with some of the knowledge that I got during my Ph.D. has been important.

Understanding the terms that people are using in more detail has also been critical. For example, if we want to map urban areas, what exactly is an urban area? We think about urban areas being San Francisco or Washington, DC or New York, but globally those are quite different and varied. In Vietnam, for example, many parts of the cities are made of vegetation, so we aren’t necessarily picking up that signal in remote sensing data the same way we would looking at San Francisco. So, bringing those ideas of geography and what constitutes a certain land cover type, or this broader picture of what the data are saying has been useful for the team. I have since recruited some of my friends out of Madison so we now have more geographers on the team, which is great, as we’re able to convey geographic concepts to the broader group. I think it just arms us better to go out and talk to other experts in the field, and better communicate with our clients as well. For the organization, I think it has been very useful to have that knowledge on the team.

In terms of our community, Santa Fe is a small town and our company is a big fish in a small pond, so we’ve been able to give back in a variety of ways. We are out and involved in the community, and everybody thinks that what we are doing is mind-blowing, so it’s fun to present our work locally. We’ve done a few presentations around town and at schools, and it’s pretty neat to watch people who have no experience or exposure to satellite imagery see what sort of things can be done with it.

When you look back at your education trajectory, how did you discover geography? How did you realize that it connects with your aspirations and your goals in life, as a private citizen, but also as a professional?
I had a really, really amazing teacher for my intro to geography course at UC Santa Barbara. I didn’t know geography was something that I could major in when I went into undergrad; I took the course to fulfill a math requirement. The course was amazing. Carl Sundbeck, the lecturer for the course, showed different images of a road trip he took in the 1970s across the entire United States. He was describing the landscape and how different mountain ranges formed, or how a city such as Los Angeles grew up where it did because of the geography of the region and why that was beneficial. Drawing these connections just sort of blew me away, and suddenly the world made sense in a way I had never thought about. And it made me want to learn about geography, obviously, so then I ended up majoring in it.

I traveled for a bit between my Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, and it was amazing making those same connections that I was making during my initial intro to geography classes. It was really exciting and made me want to continue down that path. During my Master’s degree, I was doing a lot of data processing and epidemiology work, which is very statistical and very important, but it’s just not for me. I felt stuck at my desk and not really doing the work that I wanted to be doing. I went to Vietnam the summer between the two years of my Master’s program with a friend of mine from undergrad who was from there and we stayed with her family. I felt the same way as an undergrad when I was traveling. I wanted to get back to geography and do research that was in the field, which was a lot more dynamic than what I was working on for my Master’s thesis.

I then ended up going to Madison for my Ph.D. because the woman who taught my remote sensing classes at Santa Barbara had moved there. So I went to work with her and basically went with the excuse that I wanted to continue exploring, traveling, and getting to know other cultures. I proposed to do the work in Vietnam and got it funded by NASA. I was really lucky in that regard, as I got to sort of drive my own ship. And then coming to Descartes, it just sort of continued. I’m not necessarily out in the field collecting data and interviewing farmers, but it’s still every single day looking at satellite imagery and trying to better understand the world, so it’s exploration in a different form. It’s doing a lot of exploration via satellite imagery, not necessarily boots on the ground, but it’s still fulfilling that interest.

Do you remember having an “a-ha!” moment, that perhaps changed the way you think about issues and topics? Is there another example you might have?
It definitely occurred when I was at Santa Barbara. I realized that “Wow, you can earn a living doing something that you really love!” I don’t know what I envisioned I’d be doing after college when I was 18, or what I’d be doing as a career. There was some moment at Santa Barbara when it all clicked. I remember realizing there are jobs where you can continue on a path of scientific discovery and exploration, that you don’t just have to be crunching numbers and data or doing something that’s just a job. You can do something that you really feel passionately about. You know, it probably was that first geography class, and then the same lecturer taught the follow-up class the next semester. I think at that point I was pretty hooked. At that stage, I hadn’t even taken a remote sensing class and didn’t realize what career opportunities were out there. It was just sort of like: I love this; this guy can make a living doing this, so there must be room for other people. Those first couple of classes in college were pretty crucial to where I am now.

See All Profiles
    Share