{"id":490922,"date":"2022-01-17T19:59:01","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T03:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=490922"},"modified":"2022-01-15T21:23:46","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T05:23:46","slug":"a-go-getter-encourages-other-women-to-level-up-their-careers","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/a-go-getter-encourages-other-women-to-level-up-their-careers","title":{"rendered":"A Go-Getter Encourages Other Women to Level Up Their Careers"},"author":5752,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1041,472991,10372],"tags":[37712,118382,1171,163022,25092],"arcnews_issues":[477312],"class_list":["post-490922","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaboration","category-gis","category-gis-hero","tag-dc","tag-government","tag-open-data","tag-teaching-gis","tag-women-in-gis","arcnews_issues-winter-2022","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Eva Reid emboldens women in tech to pursue challenges and try new things\u2014advice she has recently taken herself.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Over the last few months, Eva Reid has taken her own advice to pursue challenges and try new things. After 14 years at Washington, DC\u2019s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), where she\u2019d worked her way up to senior GIS analyst and GIS trainer, Reid started a new position in December as data manager for the Washington, DC, Department of Health, known as DC Health.\r\n\r\n\u201cI had to use the knowledge and encouragement that I have given other people through my business to really even consider doing this,\u201d she said, referring to her career coaching business, Eva Reid Consulting, through which she provides professional development services to women in technology and other fields where they\u2019re underrepresented. \u201cIt was a really good feeling! You know, I can\u2019t suggest that someone else do it if I haven\u2019t tried it myself, right?\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":488952,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"In her new role, Reid is helping subject matter experts at DC Health build a framework around the datasets they\u2019re already developing to make it easier for staff members across the agency to understand what data is available and how to work with it.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey need people thinking about, how should things work together? How should we be connecting different databases? How can the different parts of the agency work together in terms of collecting and using and managing data?\u201d Reid explained. So that\u2019s now her job.\r\n\r\nWhile this is an entirely new position that puts Reid a little bit out of her comfort zone\u2014in a good way\u2014she is not unfamiliar with the work. One of the big projects she led at the OCTO was building the organization\u2019s Enterprise Dataset Inventory, an internal data catalog with a corresponding public-facing open data system that guides users through how to use and map the data.\r\n\r\n\u201cI managed that project, essentially working with all the agencies to help people tease out what datasets they were using every day and then creating this giant metadata-like app,\u201d Reid said.\r\n\r\nOne of the agencies Reid liaised with regularly was DC Health. And because she has a long-standing interest in public health, taking on this new role seemed like a natural fit.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a really good situation to be in because it\u2019s an organization that I knew a little bit, and I knew a lot of the people in it, so there\u2019s support there,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\nReid has always been called to public service, and she believes that government agencies are a good place for people to spread their wings and try new things, even if it\u2019s often up to employees to find ways to do so. Seeking out new opportunities and taking on challenges are things she\u2019s always strived to do, even if\u2014like many women\u2014Reid has, at times, needed encouragement to take those chances.\r\n\r\nReid grew up on the East Coast and knew she wanted to attend a small liberal arts college after high school. When a guidance counselor mentioned that several alumni from her school had gone to Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Reid looked into it and decided that it was a good fit.\r\n\r\nWhile at Macalester, she fulfilled her natural science requirement by taking a geography course, and she was enthralled. She has always been interested in the world around her and had often wondered about things like why people live where they live. So when she found out that Macalester offered a computer-based cartography class, combining two of her nascent interests, she was in. And that was it\u2014geography became her major.\r\n\r\nFollowing graduation, Reid moved to Arizona on a whim, where she got a job at the Arizona Geographic Information Council. She stayed in Arizona for 10 years, eventually getting a master\u2019s degree in public administration from Arizona State University, working in the private sector for a while, and then landing an entry-level technician position at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT). Up to this point, things had sort of just fallen into place. But at ADOT, she carved out her first big opportunity when a GIS manager position opened up.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of my coworkers came to me and said, \u2018I really think you should apply for this. You might not get it, and that\u2019s okay. No one\u2019s going to judge you for that. But you really owe it to yourself to try,\u2019\u201d Reid recalled.\r\n\r\nSo she applied, and she got it.\r\n\r\n\u201cI was fairly young and was like, \u2018What am I doing in a management position?\u2019\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cBut then they wouldn\u2019t have hired me if they hadn\u2019t thought I could do it.\u201d\r\n\r\nTo many women\u2014and members of other groups that are underrepresented in fields like technology\u2014that is a familiar thought pattern. It\u2019s one reason Reid later felt compelled to seek connections with more women in GIS. Another reason was that, at times, she has felt quite alone in her career.\r\n\r\n\u201cFor a very long time, I was one woman on a team of, I don\u2019t know, 25 people,\u201d Reid said. \u201cI knew there were other women, and I knew they were around, but we just didn\u2019t see each other.\u201d\r\n\r\nSo she started creating spaces where women could talk to each other and learn new things without feeling judged for having different career needs than some of their male peers.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to connect women so we can help each other and lift each other up in a world that, honestly, doesn\u2019t do that enough,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\nThat was the impetus for starting Eva Reid Consulting a few years after moving to Washington, DC, and beginning her career in city government. She initially set out to target women in GIS, but soon she found that women in other fields\u2014from sports communication to aeronautical engineering\u2014were interested in her services. Now, she coaches people in a range of industries and hosts events, both in person and virtually, that encourage attendees to learn something new about themselves and level up their careers.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to help people develop themselves and feel confident so they can go do what they set out to do,\u201d Reid said.\r\n\r\nThis propensity for supporting people and helping them learn new things comes naturally to Reid and dovetails with another major component of her career: teaching. Not only did she train her OCTO colleagues in GIS, but she also spent time as an adjunct associate professor in the Geospatial Studies program at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC).\r\n\r\nWhile there, she unintentionally helped some students start a Women in GIS group on campus. Reid was substitute teaching another professor\u2019s GIS class one day when a female student came up to her and said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I belong here. No one looks like me.\u201d And it was true: there were no other women in her class. They all happened to be in Reid\u2019s class.\r\n\r\n\u201cShe was going to quit,\u201d Reid recalled. \u201cSo I said, \u2018I realize it\u2019s hard, but if I could get a group of people together to just kind of sit around and chat, would that be helpful?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Oh, my God, that would be amazing.\u2019\u201d\r\n\r\nReid set it up, and with support from colleagues, it became a more formal organization. Although Reid is no longer with NVCC, having given the program all she felt she could, the Women in GIS group is still going strong and now includes GIS professionals and students from other universities. And Reid currently runs a Women in GIS group in the Washington, DC, area.\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s one thing Reid finds remarkable about being in the GIS field: that the community is so nurturing and stimulating at the same time.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe GIS community is a place where you can try things and, generally speaking, not get in trouble for it,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd heck, someone might be really excited by it and want to talk to you about it! I\u2019ve always felt very supported by the community, and I can\u2019t say how much that has meant to me.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in the GIS Heroes<\/a> series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nA Go-Getter Encourages Other Women to Level Up Their Careers | ArcNews | Winter 2022<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Eva Reid emboldens women in tech to pursue challenges and try new things\u2014advice she has recently taken herself.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/a-go-getter-encourages-other-women-to-level-up-their-careers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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