SURVEY TECHNICIAN AT NORTHSTAR LAND SURVEYING

OREGON, USA

LIKE MANY SURVEYORS, Heidi Jackson took a scenic route to the profession. Growing up on a family farm in Wisconsin, she developed a love of the outdoors. While earning a BA in geography, she sought as her final project to map ideal locations to move to after graduation. Bellingham, WA was near the top of the list, and she spent several years there working on the board of the nonprofit organization, Wild Whatcom, that creates outdoor experiential learning opportunities for children and families.

Enrolling at Bellingham Technical College and taking an internship with the Department of Natural Resources exposed Heidi to the wonders of the Pacific Cascades and tales from her instructor and other seasoned surveyors about surveying adventures. When xyHt contacted Heidi to write about what inspires her as a young surveyor, she replied, “I want to be Indiana Jones with a tripod.” (Her essay is online at: goo.gl/G0gRAC.)

Heidi is interested in exploring the broad range of opportunities within land surveying and getting experiences from backwoods boundary surveying to big city construction to hydrographic surveying—she would like to try it all. She is also passionate about helping to promote surveying to the next generation, is on the board of the NSPS Young Surveyors Network, was a volunteer tutor for other surveying students, maintains a surveying society website, and is their youth page editor.