Jeremy Heffner, Business Development Associate

Jeremy Heffner joins Azavea as a Business Development Associate.  Coming to us from the nonprofit technology sector, he will be supporting the marketing and business development teams with writing content for our marketing pieces, managing our web presence, developing product campaigns, and researching trends in the technologies impacting our work.  He most recently worked at NPower Pennsylvania where he helped local nonprofits to better utilize technology by producing educational seminars and implementing constituent relationship management databases.  When he’s not tweaking settings on our two blogs (Atlas and Labs),  fiddling with our Google Analytics account, writing press releases or trying to persuade Robert to upgrade our CRM to SalesForce, he’s enjoying life in South Philadelphia writing content for his own blog on his Mac and reading about the latest tech fad.  Did we mention he’s obsessed with technology?

Tom Johnson and John Semmel

John Semmel joins Azavea as a Software Developer after many years in the insurance industry where he worked primarily on creating rating and quoting applications. His greatest hits in his previous position with Aetna were an enterprise census collection and analysis tool, as well as an application that enabled business people to enter, review, and test the rules that drove product selection in a major quotation application. At Azavea, he is working with the Law Enforcement team on an incident notification project for the Philadelphia Housing Authority and the second phase of ATF’s Firearms Analysis System. John is a native Philadelphian who counts cycling, writing, and finger-style guitar among his hobbies.

Tom Johnson joins Azavea as a Software Development Intern from Drexel University. He will be working with the Law Enforcement team on several of the projects they have underway, including building some features for HunchLab, Azavea’s geographic crime spike detection and early warning system. Currently in his 4th year of a 5-year program at Drexel, Tom is completing his third and final Co-Op experience here at Azavea. During his first two internships at PPL, a power utility company, he supported their engineering and design GIS by developing software enhancements and participating in design sessions for new software projects. Tom’s first exposure to GIS came in 2005 through his activities as a volunteer firefighter in his hometown outside of Allentown, PA. Tom enjoys music and reading, and the company of his family’s 2 black Labrador retrievers while on visits home from school.

Kenny Shepard, Hatef Yamini (with antlers) and Brian Jacobs

We would like to introduce you to our three newest staff members. Early on in the life of Azavea we were, for the most part, hiring software developers. Over the past several years our business development, product development, GIS analysis, and marketing/design teams have been steadily growing as well. Our introductions this month are a good illustration of how Azavea is growing as a company.

Brian Jacobs joins Azavea as Graphic Designer with over 8 years experience designing for the web and print amidst exposure to GIS and a neuroscience education. He was recently employed by the West Virginia GIS Technical Center, a state and academic organization, where he produced user-friendly geospatial applications and their surrounding websites while enjoying regional cuisine (pepperoni rolls) and a heightened appreciation of Appalachia. At Azavea, he will be working on all aspects of print and web design activities related to the marketing and branding of Azavea, our custom web applications, and products (check out the DecisionTree website, designed by Brian). A Long Island native, Brian enjoys a great bagel, epic cinema and music, hiking in the backwoods, biking in the streets, and the future of technology.

Hatef Yamini joins Azavea as Marketing Manager with over 16 years of sales and marketing experience. He will contribute to both the online and offline efforts to communicate the value of Azavea’s services and products (including the production of several new Azavea product websites including DecisionTree®, a set of web-based planning and prioritization tools; Kaleidocade™ , a web-based software program that displays maps, charts, tables, statistics and reports for aggregated, geographic indicators; and Sajara® Azavea’s geographic asset management tool). Most recently, Hatef was employed as a Business Development Manager at Care2. In his spare time, Hatef enjoys photography, the outdoors, the performing arts and involvement in the NetImpact and NetSquared communities-and his lucky goldfish.

Kenneth Shepard joins Azavea as Software Developer on our Law Enforcement team. He previously worked in the financial services world, where he designed and developed several applications used for the automated electronic trading of various financial instruments. Several of the projects on which he will be working are the Philadelphia Police Department’s Public CrimeMap application; the HunchLab™ software system designed to identify and warn relevant authorities about changes and aberrations in the patterns of geographic events (such as crime); and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Firearms Analysis System. He has recently moved to Philadelphia from Connecticut, and is having fun exploring the radically different environment. He enjoys yoga, cooking, snowboarding, and music.

Sean McGinnis and Reed Lauber in Philadelphia
(mmm… someone went a bit crazy with Photoshop!)

Reed Lauber joins Azavea as a Software Developer and will be working with the ‘Land Records’ team. He has over six years of experience building web-based applications. He recently has worked on a series of products for college Student Employment offices to help students find jobs and record their time worked. Reed enjoys music, movies, cooking and eating great food, beer and wine, tennis, and Flash games. Reed also spends a lot of his spare time tinkering with new web application ideas.

Sean McGinnis joins Azavea as a Project Manager. He will be working on a variety of projects, focusing initially on our HunchLab and ‘Land Records’ projects. He most recently worked at Civil Solutions where he was a Project Manager/Senior GIS Specialist. While there he was responsible for designing and developing business processes for specific geospatial applications and designing, implementing, and managing enterprise GIS stacks for public, private, and nonprofit organizations. Outside of work, Sean likes hiking with his wife and dog, whitewater kayaking, rock climbing, brewing and drinking beer, and cooking for friends (not always in that order).

We continue to seek qualified candidates for two additional positions – Software Developer and Software Tester. We are looking for colleagues who are curious, open-minded, or wish to contribute to their community, and make a difference through their work at Azavea. We welcome candidates from all walks of life and value diversity in our company. Available positions are thought-provoking, challenging, rewarding, full-time, and offer a competitive salary and stellar benefit package. Visit the ‘Careers’ page on our website for more information.

To apply, please send your answers to our applicant questionnaire, your cover letter and resume to Abby Fretz.

Deborah Sting and Josh Marcus

Once again we have some ‘New Staff’ introductions to make! Deb and Josh joined Azavea in October and November.

Deborah Sting joins Azavea as a Project Assistant and will be providing support for PhillyHistory.org and assisting with the marketing of Sajara. Prior to joining Azavea, Deb lived in Chicago where she worked as an intern at the Winnetka Historical Society. She was also an educational interpreter at John G. Shedd Aquarium where she developed programming, interacted with guests, and constantly tried to decide if it was the Giant Pacific Octopus or the Beluga Whale that was her favorite animal. In the spare time that comes from no longer being in graduate school, Deb deals with a serious book obsession, enjoys pestering people about how they can save the planet, and gets a little itchy if she can’t travel at least twice a month.

Josh Marcus joins Azavea as a Software Developer and will be working with our Kaleidocade and Cicero teams. Josh has ten years of experience applying his software engineering, system architecture, and management experience to building sophisticated, scalable web-based applications. Prior to joining Azavea, Josh served as Chief Technology Officer for Solutions for Progress, a public policy technology company. In that role, he led the development of The Benefit Bank for several state governments, a web-based application that helps low income households gain access to tax credits and public benefit programs. Josh is passionate about finding new ways to use his geek powers for good. For example, he went to Kenya last winter with his wife, a community radio activist and grassroots lobbyist, to build community radio stations and teach technology skills. He is a long time resident of West Philadelphia, where he loves to read science fiction and political theory, bike, brew beer, play board games and literary games, and wander aimlessly in search of new urban wonders.

Auto Portrait at City Hall a few days before Christmas.
From Rachel’s collection of daily photographs.

Rachel Cheetham-Richard, Vice President and Marketing Director brings a wealth of marketing and business development experience to the Azavea team. Before joining Azavea, she worked at The Wilma Theater as the Director of External Relations where she managed all fundraising and marketing activities for the theater. Rachel came to the Wilma from Avenue of the Arts, Inc. (AAI), where she served as the Director of Business Development and Marketing. During her time at AAI she worked at establishing the organization‘s first Membership Program, fostering collaboration amongst and exposure for the arts and culture institutions along North and South Broad Street.

At Azavea Rachel oversees human resources, marketing strategy for Azavea products Cicero, Esphero, REX, Kaleidocade, Sajara and DecisionTree, company branding including website and graphic design and is project manager for Azavea‘s work with the City of Philadelphia Department of Records‘ digital photo archive project, PhillyHistory.org

Originally from France, she enjoys cooking with lots of butter, sour cream and garlic. When she is not engaged in a fencing joust with Robert, she loves taking photographs, some of which are actually used in the top banner on the Azavea website. She also has a life-long project of taking “a photo a day”, as a way of recording ephemeral and simple moments of her life.

The world of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GIS related software design has been growing at a rapid pace. Azavea has recognized the value of introducing talented student programmers to the world of GIS and geographic-based programming and have highly valued the innovative, fresh outlook our talented interns bring to the Azavea team.

Kate Ericson
Kate joins us as a fourth year Computer Science major from Drexel University. In her current and third internship, Kate was seeking to spend the large part of her day writing code for interesting projects. During her time at Azavea Kate has strengthened her logic skills and has added to her experience of working with databases. She enjoys working on software that incorporates spatial elements such as mapping as it has pushed her to think beyond a linear approach to programming. An avid student of Japanese culture, Kate takes Japanese language classes at Drexel and is a white belt Aikido student – a skill which she shared with the rest of the office during a recent lunch meeting.

Bernard Wolff
Bernard also joins us as a fourth year Computer Science major from Drexel. Like Kate, Bernard completed two internships prior to joining Azavea. Having gone through his first two internships with large, corporate companies he was looking for an experience with a small company where he would get to know the entire staff. In Azavea, he also saw the opportunity to learn new programs and skills he had not previously encountered. Here, he has been able to write a global geocoding application of considerable size and depth. Additionally, Bernard has built the new Azavea family web sites (making their debut in the new year!) using the content management software, DotNetNuke. Bernard enjoys hiking, camping and soaking up the great outdoors.

‘Tune in’ in March for an introduction to our two History graduate students from Temple and their work in the Philadelphia City Archives for PhillyHistory.org.