Let us know a little about yourself, your current employment, and how you 'found' GIS.

Where I grew up, in Rochester, NY, there wasn’t much of a job market for people like me who had a ‘not-so-hot' anthropology undergraduate degree. I also had simmering interests in public health and epidemiology and had plans to pursue graduate studies in those fields to better my chances of starting a professional career. When I got laid off in 2009, I moved to the Washington, D.C. metro area to take a job in population health, thus putting my education pursuits on hold. After a few years of financial stability, I applied to a few Master of Public Health programs, to which I was rejected. While expressing my disappointment to co-workers, they told me about courses in GIS that they taken. I had never heard of GIS, but after Googling what it was, I discovered that my interest was piqued. After more research, I decided it would be my next pursuit. Today, I’m employed as a GIS Developer for the University of Kansas primarily managing a statewide geospatial clearinghouse and collaborating with Kansas state agencies on their projects.