Throughout January, xyHt.com will feature the young geospatial professionals who are making a name for themselves in everything from surveying to geographic information systems. xyHt featured all of them in the January issue. Here we will spotlight one each day.
Name: Matthew Gibb
Company: Maxar
Current Position: Manager, Geospatial Tradecraft
Age: 31
Education: MS in Geographic Information Science for Development and Environment, Clark University; BS in Geography/Geographic Information Systems, University at Buffalo
Biography: Matt is making a career out of turning geospatial data into actionable information. His first role out of college was working with FEMA – including time spent in St. Thomas – to create maps and geospatial data to assist those directly impacted by natural disasters. He took that experience to the American Red Cross, where he served as a GIS Officer in the International Services Division.
It was in this role he became involved with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (OSM) Team (HOT), an international team dedicated to humanitarian action and community development through open mapping. Matt spent numerous hours developing workflows and training guides to educate hundreds of new users of OpenStreetMap – many of them native to their country and not at all familiar with GIS. Matt provided GIS services for the Haiti Assistance Program, wider International Department programs, and international disaster response, while also providing mobile data collection training as part of the Missing Maps project. During his tenure, he was deployed to disasters in Ecuador, Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Bangladesh.
In his current role at Maxar, Matt continues to give back to the geospatial community by focusing on making the community bigger. He has led numerous mapathons on behalf of Maxar, especially with the local community of St. Louis with high schools and students at historically black colleges and universities. He also leads a team driving the development of new workflows and techniques to aid the U.S. government in adopting open-source tools and technologies for geospatial feature production.
Matt is the next generation of leader, especially in the adoption of open-source tools and tradecraft.
