Hi my name is Jessie Paulson! Welcome to my website. I am a graduate of UW-Madison with degrees in Environmental Studies, Cartography and GIS, and Political Science. I am well versed in ESRI technologies such as ArcGIS Desktop, ArcPro, and ArcOnline, as well as Adobe Creative Suite, QGIS, ENVI, ERDAS, CSS, Java, and Python. I have practiced my technical skillset through on-the-job training, previous academic study and internship experiences.
Currently, I am a Geospatial Analyst Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton. I am contracted through the Army National Guard where I provide program support for both facility and environmental GIS related guidance for the Installation and Environment Directorate. Within the National Guard, I develop maps, simulations, and database analyses that relate to environmental, facility, and master planning concerns for Army National Guard. I also manage and coordinate data collection quality control and quality assurance projects. Three main products I have produced for the Guard are 1) a Standard Operating Procedure including map packages, directions, and excel sheets for National Guard's Hurricane response and 2) A archival datase of Guard sites that have closed or been disposed in the past 5, 10, or 15+ years ago, and 3) Creating or re-creating all recent Guard map products in the newest ESRI technology, ArcPro.
Before Booz Allen Hamilton, I was a Geospatial Analyst for Radiant Solutions, formerly MDA Information Systems, where I was fortunate to work on several different project teams. Two significant projects on which I contributed were land cover products and the testing and evaluation of a new, in-house digitizing software. Working with aerial imagery from Digital Globe and Sentinel satellites, I helped to identify, collect, manage, and correct land cover and land use classifications in order to run spatial analysis in ERDAS Imagine and ultimately produce global-scale applications. In the testing of new software, I started using the software in a pilot project focused on feature extraction. For the pilot, we were tasked with evaluating the our in-house software versus an open-source program. We used this new software to map the ocean shoreline along southern coast of Africa. In each of these projects, I didn't only studied the aerial imagery but also conducted research using classified and unclassified data sources to locate and analyze natural and man-made features.
In addition to my work experience, I had a wonderful experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in both academics and internships. In academics, I completed three majors in four years at Wisconsin. For each, I completed a senior/end-of-major project, internship/assistantship, and/or volunteering experience which prepared me well for my future job opportunities. Most of the college projects can be found on this website. For my Cartography/GIS internships, I was fortunate to have a great experience as an aerial imagery intern at the SILVIS Lab in the Department of Forestry and Wildlife during my senior year at UW. In the summer of 2016, I was the Research and GIS Intern at Washington DC Economic Partnership, which fulfilled both my interest politics and local development and my interest in continuing practicing my skills in Cartography. Finally, in Environmental Studies, I completed an internship with Virginia Outdoors Foundation.