GeoMentor Spotlight

Rob Kraft – Program Manager, California

October 8, 2019

Position: Program Manager at BAE Systems, Inc.

What was your favorite class in K-12? Economics in junior high, followed closely by Social Studies and then by recess in K-6^th! [No, we did not have a dedicated Geography class in K-12!]

How did you first learn about and/or use GIS? Before it was widely called “GIS”, I learned about GIS in Penn State’s Geography Department in 1988 when they offered it as one of the four Geography specializations. Embarrassingly enough for this forum, I eschewed that track in favor of Planning & Applied Geography (aka Urban Planning and Regional Development), which is still my hobby.

Name one thing you love about GIS and/or geography: The foremost thing I love about geography (and what I always mention) is how applicable and pervasive geography is in today’s world. The field of Geography is so malleable that is can be applied to many, many, fields of study in the physical & social sciences, business, government & policy and anywhere folks apply ‘data science’. Global Navigation Satellite Systems, the open data movement and smart devices have really driven a resurgence in Geography in today’s world. The Internet of Things, Smart Cities, Data Science, Autonomous Vehicles and many societal issues & policies, all rely heavily on Geography, GIS, spatial and temporal data alignment and geospatial standards (go OGC!).

Why did you want to volunteer as a GeoMentor? I truly believe in the Geography Week & GIS Day program so I have been volunteering in my kids’ classrooms each year to be a guest speaker since 2012. Every year at our initial parent teacher meetings, I always ask if I can present during Geography week. I use a Geography topic or GIS to reinforce a current curriculum topic, which helps the teacher… I have never been turned away! We also have an analogous effort at work called “Partners in Education”, which is our geospatially-focused STEM outreach program. So, for me, it is a way to share my love of Geography, connect with my kids and their friends AND facilitate our agency’s STEM outreach mission.

If someone asked you why they should learn about GIS and/or geography, how would you respond in one sentence? GIS and Geography are foundational and pervasive throughout society and business today with the ubiquity of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, smart devices, open data and data science: Geographers and GIS experts are needed everywhere!

Websites:

Twitter: @rwspacekraft

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: Program Manager at BAE Systems, Inc.

What was your favorite class in K-12? Economics in junior high, followed closely by Social Studies and then by recess in K-6^th! [No, we did not have a dedicated Geography class in K-12!]

Websites:

Twitter: @rwspacekraft

Rob Kraft – Program Manager, California

Powerful Geography: Place & Social Justice

Social Justice and Place-Based Geographic Research

Powerful Geography: Mapping and Community Engagement

Social Justice and Place-Based Geographic Research

Dr. Camelia Kantor

Lester Rowntree

John Webb

Jane Daniels

Claire Dwyer

Michael Bradford

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