Home: Denver, Colorado

UT Dallas Degree: BA – Interdisciplinary Studies (focus Environmental Sciences), MS – Geographic Information Sciences (School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences), Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Sciences

Work Background

I am a Senior Consultant and Project Manager with Esri, Inc., the leading geographic information systems software company. I have been with Esri for 13 years and formerly worked as a GIS Applications Developer for MSI and Marconi (now Ericsson) in Dallas, and in GIS data and application development for radio frequency planning for the cellular telecom industry in London.

I predominantly support clients in the utilities sector who want to deploy our software and integrate it with other critical business software applications. This support may be business process engineering, high-level systems designs or more traditional project management. The majority of my work has been international with projects in places as diverse as Jordan, India, Slovenia, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and the United Arab Emirates.

Accolades

In December 2014 I completed an 18-month certificate in Enology from Washington State University. Photography has been a long-time hobby, and I have had photographs selected for juried exhibits at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado, and have had images published in national magazines. In fact, a number of my early landscape photos hung in the student union lounge for a number of years. I cringed the last time I saw them because they were so crude and rudimentary compared to where I have come as an artist now, but it was a great honor for me at the time.

Benefits of on IS Degree

I was incredibly fortunate to earn a scholarship from UTD at a time of great growth and vision for the university and to be an incoming freshman in the first, full-time freshman class in 1993. I started as a Chemistry major but clearly wasn’t cut out for it. UTD dropped its environmental sciences program in the early ‘90s, but it was an area I was interested in. Deciding to switch to an IS degree gave me the flexibility to put together a broad-based set of relevant classes across the sciences and humanities that was relevant to what interested me and what I wanted out of a degree. It also opened the door to studies in what was, at the time, a certificate in Geographic Information Sciences. That piqued my interest and I decided to continue with that after I finished my undergraduate work. Before I completed the certificate, the University established a Master’s degree in GIS, so I transitioned to that program and it leveraged course work across the social sciences and geology departments. I was already very comfortable working across these disciplines owing to my IS course work and understanding how to make the most of what each had to offer.

Certainly, having a full scholarship was a tremendous advantage in coming out of undergrad debt free, and I think the “bet” that the administration and donors placed to accelerate the growth and increase the status and recognition of UT Dallas was a bold one that has paid off. I can’t think of a better example of this than the fact that one of my undergrad roommates, and the best man at my wedding, (now Dr.) Ted Price, is now a UTD professor making great strides in the study of pain treatment-things are really coming full circle!

One of my strengths in my current job as a consultant is an ability to work with and understand both business and technical needs and constraints, and translate between the two. To some degree, this follows from the nature of my studies.

Dr. Homer Montgomery was a tremendous role model for me and really broadened my horizons to the possibilities of finding unique professional niches for oneself as well as to the broader world and culture outside of Texas. It really inculcated a wanderlust and passion for travel that drove me to take opportunities abroad, ultimately serving me well in my career. Being at UTD at that time and studying under many of the “old guard” gave us a sense of the history of the school. For example, I remember taking glaciology from Dr. Robert Rutford and being in awe of the fact that he had parts of Antarctica named in his honor. Dr. Rutford also encouraged my interest in photography and even gave me a terrific old, used camera lens of his that I literally still use to this day– probably more than any other I own.

Interests

Spending time with my family, enjoying outdoors in Colorado (snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking), wine making, photography.