Profiles

For his entire career in public service, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper has been following a passion for integrating geographic knowledge into government.

She campaigned to get the Girl Scouts to stop using unsustainable palm oil in their cookies. She got Kellogg’s to agree to a deforestation-free policy for all its products. She has studied land rights in Colombia, traveled to Cambodia to make a short documentary on a politician fighting for victims of land grabs, and observed how palm oil farming affects local communities in Malaysia and Singapore. She is a United Nations Forest Hero and was honored at the Teen Choice Awards. She sits on the board of the Jane Goodall Institute. And she’s currently working on her thesis. Her undergraduate senior thesis. Madison Vorva, who goes by Madi, is only 21 years old.

He’s been shipwrecked on a desert island; he once climbed two of Southern California’s tallest mountains in a day; and there was that time he got evacuated from Baghdad in an armored vehicle—and it got hit by an improvised explosive device. But aside from his sense of adventure, what really distinguishes Mark Sorensen, founder and CEO of the Geographic Planning Collaborative (GPC) Group, is his drive to extend and expand the use of GIS—especially in the developing world.

For Menghestab Haile, GIS is about transforming development. “GIS will accelerate development—if we can manage to make it understandable for decision-makers,” he said. To him, leaders are the key to precipitating progress. “If you really want to make a difference in a country or on a continent, you really need to have the decision-makers on board,” he added. But across Africa, where Haile has focused his career, many governments don’t have the information they need to make informed decisions.

Passionate, wonderful, energetic, and caring are just a few of the exclusively favorable adjectives people use to describe Shoreh Elhami, the founder of GISCorps.