Women in GIS Webinar: Social Justice featuring Ms. Sophia Garcia 3/30 @ 11am

Women in GIS ( https: // womeningis. Wildapricot.org/ )
Webinar: Mon, Mar 30, 2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT
Title: Social Justice featuring Ms. Sophia Garcia, GIS Analyst, https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiagarcia/

This talk explores how a young GIS professional, Ms. Sophia Garcia uses GIS to focus on achieving social justice during international women’s month. In this webinar, participants will:

• Learn about a real-world career that uses GIS
• Hear about real-world examples of how women use GIS
• Understand the career and education path of a young GIS professional
•  Develop clarify on the power of women in GIS especially during International Women’s Month

To register for this webinar: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/526079336101984779?source=WomenInGIS

Sophia Garcia is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analyst for the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the pursuit of social justice in disadvantaged communities. She is part of a new team helping the foundation move towards the utilization of big data and maps to enhance the work of the foundation. Sophia knows that data is knowledge and believes that nonprofits can reach a greater audience with specific data and maps for their organizations.
 
Sophia’s experience with GIS began at Wellesley College, where she is recognized as being among the first students to utilize GIS in an academic setting. Since then she has further enhanced her experience with GIS in various industries including, agriculture, transportation planning, public works, and academics. Agencies she’s worked for include Kern Council of Governments (Kern COG), Kern County Department of Agriculture and Measurement Standards and Kern County Department of Public works. Each industry has allowed her to see the breath/reach that GIS has across diverse industries.
 
Sophia is a founding member of the URISA Equity and Social Justice (E&SJ) Committee that works to develop educational materials to help GIS professionals better address issues of equity into their work and to help decision-makers and social justice organizations utilize GIS technology. Sophia is the co-facilitator for the E&SJ GIS Special Interest Group at the ESRI UC, and she was awarded the 3rd place in the collegian student category at the 2016 ESRI UC, for her map highlighting student protests across the country in support of University of Missouri student’s #ConcernedStudent1950. Sophia has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College and was in the inaugural graduating class of the GIS certificate at California State University Bakersfield.
 
During her free time, Sophia enjoys white water kayaking and rafting on the Kern River and hiking with her dog a labradoodle named Koda.