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.

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Lester Rowntree

Geographer Lester Rowntree was most at home exploring landscapes, to both appreciate and protect their cultural and ecological diversity. As a gifted educator, he enthusiastically shared what he learned and inspired his students to engage with the natural world. Les (the name he preferred) was an environmental geographer by training who loved nothing more than to walk in the oak woodlands, sail across the San Francisco Bay, or climb in the Sierra Nevada or the Cascades for the sheer joy of it. He made his impact on the disciplines of geography and environmental studies through teaching at San José State University, writing textbooks, scholarly articles on the cultural landscape, and a lifetime of research and activism working with California’s natural environment. He was a superb mentor for geographers of any age, making time for long discussions, careful listening, and wise advice. Les passed away on August 30th in his Berkeley home after a long struggle with cancer. He was 80 years old.

As a scholar Les was most known for a series of important essays on cultural landscape interpretation. He and his wife, archaeologist Meg Conkey, co-authored an influential paper in 1980 titled “Symbolism and the Cultural Landscape” that appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Another influential piece was the 1996 essay “The Cultural Landscape Concept in American Human Geography” which appeared in Concepts in Human Geography edited by Carville Earle, Kent Mathewson, and Martin Kenzer. He also was a prolific textbook author. In the 1980s he joined geographer Terry Jordan to co-author The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography, a project he worked on for seven editions. He then collaborated with Martin Lewis, Marie Price and William Wyckoff for over 20 years on two world regional geography books, Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development (seven editions) and Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World (six editions). The books introduced a thematic structure for world regions while conceptually linking areas through globalization processes. The most recent edition of Globalization and Diversity was published in 2019. The best part about working with Les on these books was the way he approached it, with joy, high energy, purposefulness, and a dash of irreverence.

Although he wrote about the world, Lester Bradford Rowntree was a native Californian who cared deeply about his home. Born by the Pacific Ocean in Carmel on December 22, 1938, he spent his youth in what he called a “quaint village of artists, bohemians, and other interesting folk”. In the post-war years his parents moved to Berkeley, where his father was a member of the Berkeley Fire Department. Les attended school there, graduated from Berkeley High School, and was elected class president. His college years were restless as he struggled to find a subject that would keep his attention as much as the mountains and the sea, and toward the end he’d fondly recollect summers spent in fire lookouts and hanging out with climbers at the fabled Camp 4, near Yosemite Falls. He took time off, served in the US Army, and was eventually stationed in Germany where he wrote for Stars & Stripes. His time in Europe introduced him to the Alps, a place that he returned to for his doctoral research. After being honorably discharged from the army as a conscientious objector, he eventually returned to California and San José State University where he earned a BA in Geography in 1966. He then went to the University of Oregon where he earned his MA (1970) and PhD (1971) studying the human ecology of mountain systems.

With a PhD in hand, he returned to San José State University (SJSU) to teach. For over 30 years he taught in the Departments of Geography and Environmental Studies, introducing thousands of students to his passion for environmental geography and landscape interpretation, and steering a long list of students to graduate studies. While at SJSU he chaired the Department of Environmental Studies from 1995-2005. That department, established in 1970, was one of the first of its kind in the country. He retired from SJSU as Professor Emeritus in 2005 to focus on his writing, activism and love of the outdoors. He held Visiting Scholar and Research Associate appointments at the University of California, Berkeley since 2005.

Perhaps the most personal scholarly project of his career was Hardy Californians: A Woman’s Life with Native Plants, which was published in 2006 by the University of California Press. A monograph by the same title was first published in 1936 by (Gertrude) Lester Rowntree, Les’s grandmother, with whom he shared the identical name. His grandmother lived in the Carmel Highlands and was a pioneering expert on California’s native flora. Les took enormous pride in re-introducing his grandmother’s path-breaking work to a new generation of ecologists and botanists. He also enjoyed writing popular environmental essays for Bay Nature. Two excellent examples of the teacher/scholar writing to a broader audience are: “When it Rains it Pours: Atmospheric Rivers and Drought”; and “Forged by Fire: Lightning and Landscape at Big Sur” in which he returns to his lifelong interest in the impact of fire on the landscape.

Even though teaching required a long commute to San José, Les eventually returned to the Berkeley Hills to live in 1987 with his wife Meg Conkey, who at that time was appointed to the Department of Anthropology as a Professor of Archeology at UC Berkeley. Their home was regularly filled with visiting scholars, friends and family. Summers often included research, especially at Meg’s field site in the Dordogne, north of the French Pyrénées, with frequent travel to a family summer home in Maine. Les and Meg also shared a devotion to Cal sports and regularly attended women’s basketball and men’s football games. Les passed away in his home with a view of the ‘hardy Californian’ native plants that filled their garden. He is survived by his wife Meg, daughters Erika and Alicechandra, three grandchildren, and his brother Rowan and sister Pat. There are plans for a memorial in November.

Marie Price and Paul F. Starrs

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John Webb

John Webb was born on 29 July 1926 in Staines, England, growing up west of London when World War II broke out. He joined the Royal Air Force during the war, but poor eyesight kept him from flying. Instead, he worked with RAF Intelligence drawing maps of Europe to be used for Allied bombing missions. After the war, he attended the University of St. Andrews, where he earned three master’s degrees in four years and met his first wife, Anne (Nancy) Smillie, an American.

Webb moved to the U.S. with Nancy in 1952, continuing his studies as a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota. He taught one year at the University of Maryland (1954-55) and returned to Minnesota an instructor (1955-58) while completing his doctorate with Jan Broek. After receiving his Ph.D. (1958) he taught in the Minnesota department, later serving administrative roles including associate dean for Social Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts (1969-73).

In 1979 Webb married Judith Holtan. They moved to Albany, New York, as he took the position of professor of geography and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the State University of New York (SUNY). He served in those positions until his retirement (1997).

His most notable publication (with Jan Broek) was A Geography of Mankind (1968), a pioneering college text organized by themes such as language, government, religion and economy as they appeared across the world. The structure of the text was a departure from the prevailing approach, which examined the map of the human world as a mosaic of regions and culture realms.

The year before Webb died, while he and his daughter Jennifer traveled to England, she learned that when he left RAF service he had absconded with some maps as keepsakes, including one, written in German and dated November 1940, which had been recovered by the Allies. It was a Nazi aerial map of Weybridge, Webb’s hometown and home to an important airfield and factory. The Germans had dropped some 500 bombs on the city over the course of the war. Although the Brits disguised and camouflaged the factory when war broke out, it could be seen clearly on the Nazi map.

The site of the former Weybridge airfield now has a museum where John and Jennifer donated the map some 78 years after it was created. It remains on display there. She recalled: “It was really neat because all the volunteers at the museum came and crowded around him and wanted to talk about it. … It gave him some closure,” she said.

Following retirement from SUNY Albany, John and Judith eventually settled in St. Cloud, MN, where he died on 18 August 2019 at the age of 93. He was survived by his wife Judith, his daughter, Jennifer Fusaro and son John Webb.

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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.

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Claire Dwyer

It is a very great sadness to bring news of the death of our dear friend and colleague, Claire Dwyer. She was diagnosed with a rare and serious form of cancer last year, and died peacefully on Sunday afternoon (14th July). She will be missed by so many of us in the geographical community and beyond.

Claire spent most of her academic career at University College London, where she undertook her PhD research on the identities of young British Muslim women. She joined the Departmental academic staff as a lecturer in 1995. However, she was also an international figure – some of the strongest influences on her ideas and interests were formed during her Masters course at Syracuse, which followed her undergraduate degree at Oxford. She had formal visiting fellowships at York University in Toronto, at UBC in Vancouver, at Uppsala and Utrecht universities, and was a regular speaker at events in the USA and Singapore.

Claire’s research made a vital contribution to social geography. Her early focus on gender, religion and ethnicity remained at the core of that contribution, but her work developed in new and distinctive directions, on transnational consumption in explorations of diasporic South Asian fashion, on innovation in qualitative methods, and in the critical analysis of the growth of faith schools in the UK. Throughout her career, her critical feminism underpinned her thinking and her approach. She was one of the co-authors of Geographies of New Femininities in 1999, and was active in the growth and success of the RGS-IBG Gender and Feminist Geography Research Group, serving on its committee for fifteen years.

Claire’s most recent research on the creativities of suburban faith communities played to her strengths. She had a real gift for putting people at their ease, and brought together different publics with artists and other creative professionals in a series of genuinely participatory projects. She was also a great leader of a diverse project team with many different skills and talents. The work drew upon both her academic expertise, but also her religious faith – she had a brilliant capacity to listen and understand the beliefs, practices and creativities of people with different faiths, an empathy that was generous but also critical and questioning.

Claire’s career was also marked by a strong commitment to teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels alike. She cared deeply about her students, leading courses in social geography and in migration and transnationalism, and was always in great demand as a dissertation supervisor. She founded and convened a successful Masters programme in Global Migration, linked to the Migration Research Unit, of which she was co-director. She was committed to the development of new generations of scholars in social geography, particularly in issues of migration, diaspora, identity, gender and religion. She had an extraordinary record of PhD supervision, supervising over 20 projects to completion. Many of these PhD students are now significant academics in their own right. Even now, there are 10 further projects in progress at UCL where Claire was either first or second supervisor. The loss of her drive and direction of new scholars is a loss not only to UCL, but also to the wider discipline.

Claire’s academic achievements are impressive, but what has been re-emphasized to us all in the short time since she died is how much she meant to people. She combined intelligence with great generosity, a willingness to put others before herself, and an ability to bring out the best in people. Her sound judgment, collegiality and extensive experience meant that she was always a reliable, wise and empathetic colleague to turn to for advice. She was a passionate and critical academic always engaged in the latest work and debates, but also had a life beyond, and a refreshing sense of wider priorities. Her family was at the centre of her life, and particularly she had great love and pride for her two sons. Our thoughts and for many of us, our prayers, are with them, her husband Paul, and her family.

Claire was awarded a Chair at UCL in 2018, and she was sad that illness prevented her from giving her inaugural and celebrating her career with colleagues and friends. We will now celebrate those achievements in different ways. We are hoping to arrange events in the near future to honour her life and work.

You can post tributes and memories of Claire on the UCL website: www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/claire-dwyer-condolences-memories.

Ben Page, Geography, University College London.

David Gilbert, Geography, Royal Holloway University of London.

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Michael Bradford

It is with sadness that the AAG notes the passing of Professor Michael Bradford on July 12, 2019 at the age of 74 years old. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Sheila Kaplan, of Rockford, Illinois.

Born in Surrey, Michael became interested in geography throughout grammar school, an interest which continued while he attended Cambridge University in the 1960s. Michael enjoyed a long career at Manchester University where he moved in 1971 following post doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. At Manchester his career led him to become a professor, Undergraduate Dean from 1994 -1996, and Head of Department from 1996 – 2000. He then served as Pro-Vice Chancellor from 2001-2005 and then as Associate Vice President in 2006.

Professor Bradford was deeply committed to geography education and served as president of the Geographical Association from 1999-2000. His love of teaching also shows through his receipt of awards such as a Distinguished Achievement Medal – Teacher of the Year 2005, a National Teaching Fellowship in 2006 from the Higher Education Teaching Council for England, and the Taylor and Francis Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Geography and Higher Education from the Royal Geographical Society in 2008.

An avid environmentalist, Michael’s research was concerned with urban policy, inequality, and social justice. Children’s geography and places of play held a particular interest for Michael. He also collaborated with lifelong friend Ashley Kent on two books: Human Geographies: Theories and their Applications (1977) and Understanding Human Geography: People and their Changing Environments (1993).

A celebration of life for Michael will be held from 1:30 – 4:30 PM on Saturday, 19th October 2019 at University Place, 126 Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL. Please contact Sheila for more information.

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GeoMentor Spotlight

Frank Romo – Public Safety Data Manager & Geospatial Consultant, Michigan

July 6, 2019

Position: Public Safety Data Manager — 911 & Emergency Services Technician

What was your favorite class in K-12? My favorite classes in school were history and geography. I really enjoyed learning how maps and diagrams were used for reconnaissance during war times to give armies the upper hand on the battlefield.

How did you first learn about and/or use GIS? I first learned GIS while studying at Columbia University. One of my first major projects was using GPS units for data collection and crowdsourcing information immediately after Hurricane Sandy. This was a transformative experience for me because it taught me how GIS can be used during times of crises to solve real-time problems for people in affected regions.

Name one thing you love about GIS and/or geography (I know, just one!): The best thing about GIS is its ability to empower residents and promote social justice in local communities. In the past, I have used GIS to address issues of inequality in cities surrounding topics like pollution, toxic hazards, racial segregation, food insecurity and public safety. GIS can be used for social good and help people fight to improve the health and well-being of their communities.

Why did you want to volunteer as a GeoMentor? I chose to become a GeoMentor because I enjoy teaching people about the power of GIS. I have taught as a GIS instructor for over five years now and find it very rewarding when I can empower students to use GIS. I chose to become a GeoMentor because I want to embrace the opportunity to teach, pass on my knowledge and share my skillset with the next generation of GIS leaders.

If someone asked you why they should learn about GIS and/or geography, how would you respond in one sentence? GIS is a fun and useful tool that can be used to positively impact the world around you!

Websites:

Twitter: @romo_GIS

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.

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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.

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