Ellen is a principal of IntegraShare Dimensions, along with partner and principal, Gus Nodwell. Ellen serves as the company’s CEO.
Ellen is a principal of IntegraShare Dimensions, along with partner and principal, Gus Nodwell. Ellen serves as the company’s CEO.
Ellen’s interests lie in working with business people, enabling them to make good decisions based on good data using appropriate, fit-for-purpose technologies and tools that bring different “data layers” together to facilitate the decision making process.
She knows from experience that building a good technology and data framework is a shared responsibility requiring a true partnership between business and technology groups. Such a partnership requires effective leadership from the top of the organization, to champion the use of the technology and data – and broad participation with all stakeholders actively contributing in order for the implementation to be effective, well utilized and sustained over time.
Ellen has spent much of her career facilitating and building business relationships, which is an ongoing effort – people change – organizations change – and change management is critical. Ellen believes that organizations need a strategy for integrating the components of data and information into the business value chain, such that people in all roles can find, trust, and utilize the right data to support their work and achieve the goals of the business.
She is a proponent of individual accountability and constant data validation during work processes, ensuring business is only using “good” data. She believes in implementing relevant, not fancy, cost-effective sustainable processes to assure data quality going forward.
Ellen has worked on many projects that required thoughtful design and implementation of straightforward processes to collect validate and maintain data to promote the best experiences in the use of data in all business processes where people consume, analyze and visualize information in the course of their work activities.
Her work with clients often involves helping their teams alter their data-handling habits to bring long-term benefits to the business. Ellen constantly emphasizes that partnering and team work are the keys to enabling technology and data management success of any type — everyone in the organization, top to bottom, has some “skin in the game”, and will ultimately benefit from making these efforts successful.
Experience:
Information and Data Management – Solutions Delivery – Leadership and People Management – Strategy Consulting – GIS Professional Development Research and Strategic Planning for GIS – Organizational Planning and Development. GIS and Geospatial technology – Esri ArcGIS Platform – Leaflet – Azure Cloud Architecture Strategies for SaaS Delivery – Data and Technology Governance – Process and Workflow Development
History:
Prior to 1995, Ellen worked in non-IT parts of organizations in different flavors of analyst and technical support roles, but always these included analysis responsibilities which today are termed “business analysis”. During this time, she developed a great deal of business acumen – insight and understanding about how teams and individuals within them work with data and how leadership in organizations frequently do not understand what is happening with their corporate “data assets”.
In Ellen’s transition into IT, she was valued for having worked within business areas so she could give more perspective on how solutions would be best designed for adoption by business users.
From 1995 through mid 2013, Ellen worked within IT departments in corporate organizations (three different companies). She worked in progressively more responsible capacities, beginning with a systems analyst role related to information systems architecture designs and implementation, data management, and data integration including both spatial and non-spatial data solutions delivery.
She served variously as project manager, team lead and lastly as a global manager during her time in corporate IT organizations.
In her experience she learned that often, CIO’s are tagged with responsibility for the totality of a corporation’s data, but are the least informed about business data handling by people in the business side of the organization, especially in lower levels where data handling is a daily hands on activity. The details and data handling processes are often left loosely controlled or ungoverned in most organizations.
Ellen has taken this understanding and insight on board and used these as a foundation of wisdom in her work throughout her time serving in technology roles and continuing on today as a consultant and service provider.
Since mid-2013, after leaving corporate employment, she has been a consultant and service provider, working on projects with these partners, client companies and organizations:
Areas of Capability:
- Business analysis
- Technology strategy development
- System architecture designs
- Deployment of integrated systems
- Business life-cycle data governance and management – strategy development
- ROI analysis pre- and post- technology implementations
- Business workflow focused technology solution designs
- Building and managing effective teams
- Geospatial data and GIS subject matter expert; Geospatial data governance strategy development and the development of geospatial governance policies and processes; Geospatial data management; Geospatial data modeling
- Esri GIS technology platform.
Working on teams led by Noah Consulting, IntegraShare Dimensions, IntegraShare Solutioneering, Slalom Solutions, and Geospatial Creative, on projects for these organizations:
British Petroleum (BP), Baker-Hughes, Trans-Canada Pipeline/TCEnergy, Texas A&M University, Alta Mesa Holdings, LP (Alta Mesa Resources), Pioneer Natural Resources, San Jacinto River Authority, City of Austin, and several local small businesses.
Working with Non-profits: The PODS Association, PPDM, APSG and the APSG Education Foundation, Montgomery County CASA:
Ellen has worked with non-profit organizations, advising on how to manage growth and combine leadership with technical and organizational goals in order to be successful, then facilitating efforts to achieve objectives. She has developed and delivered training and presentations on standards adoption and many data management and governance subjects at non-profit organization member conferences.
Support for Education of Geospatial Professionals:
She has worked and continues to work with higher education organizations advising on the curriculum that enables students in the geospatial sciences and technology areas to graduate as “work-ready”.
She presently serves on the Brookhaven College Geospatial Technology Advisory Board (Dallas College District). In business IntegraShare works with local universities providing student internships as well as hiring graduates to mentor their careers.
She also serves representing public sector/citizen science in the NASA SpORT Stakeholder Group, a collaboration of Government, Universities, and Public Sector representatives who convene to review work being done by various federal agencies around monitoring the weather and the environment by data collection, processing, and publishing into related information products for public, commercial and scientific consumption.
Expand for more details on Ellen’s work within the education space:
Research and assessment for program development strategies
Mentoring new grads and young professionals
Internship supervision
Consulting for educational organizations to help bring GIS job-readiness into program curriculum
GIS program advisor at Brookhaven College (Dallas College System)
Competency and capability analysis
Training development and delivery of geospatial and standards content
Feedback to research and development groups through attendance in collaborative sessions with scientists, technologists, and others in the geospatial observation community
Ellen is certified as a GISP (GIS Professional) through the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI).
- GISCI as a certification body has made efforts over the past decades since its inception to standardize the skills required for competency in GIS across verticals to insure that people who are certified are capable of performing work using the wide array of skills that a GIS professional must gain.
- Experience and leadership are also considered as integral in being a successful GIS Professional.
- Keeping up through attendance at training sessions, conference sessions, courses, and online webinars is also important to continue holding skills and building new skills related to the rapidly evolving science and technology in the world of geospatial professionals.
Links to see more about Ellen’s experience:
