As a preview to the September 29 NEGIS Lunch and Learn
hosted by Esri, the two Negis 2016 scholarship recipients shared a bit about
their summer internships.
Ahna Miller, a Master’s student at Clark University, will be
graduating in May 2017 with a degree in Geographic Information Science for
Development and Environment. Her internship with Driscoll’s, "the leader
in fresh market berries" based in Watsonville, CA, focused on bringing the
field into the office. The company is transitioning from using just a few desktop
GIS seats to a true enterprise solution. The plan over the next year, is for
the company to map all of its producing areas worldwide. Ahna and her team
crafted tools to gather geographic data on the ranches, review them and load them
into an enterprise database. The workflow included Collector for data
collection, ArcGIS Online for data review and a custom ArcGIS Online app dubbed
“Widget.” Ahna’s big takeaway related to change: “Change management is hard,
but ultimately rewarding.” That said, with her participation in a successful
pilot this summer and ongoing consulting work, Ahna has a line on an internship
for the spring and, fingers crossed, beyond!
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| Phillip Gomez and Ahna Miller with NEGIS' Helenmary Hotz. |
Phillip Gomez is a senior at Dartmouth College studying geography and government. He spent his summer in Waltham, MA as an intern with McKinsey & Company, “the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world's most influential businesses and institutions.” Phillip worked on a number of projects a geospatial analytics Intern. One involved evaluating geodata to support internal teams. The goal was to determine the “best” solution for obtaining sociodemographic and geomarketing data for Europe. He looked at public and private data and evaluated them based on granularity, vintage, geographies, attribute data, and cost. He also used Alteryx to find new doctors to fill positions at a client hospital, performed a competition analysis for a South American retailer, and supported the development of a region economic model for a developing country exploring the impact of a new railroad. Phillip noted that on several occasions he had to give himself a “crash course” in a new technology or area. He was pleased that his education thus far has taught him how to learn. That will take him far!