Kaytlin Colburn 2011

Kaytlin Colburn ’11 first learned about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as part of her coursework in environmental science at Sweet Briar College. Since then, she has used the technology to track activities on offshore drilling platforms, an arctic icebreaker, forestry departments and airports.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t challenged to take a class I never would have taken otherwise to complete my degree at Sweet Briar,” she says. “Because of the person Sweet Briar prepared me to be, I was able to complete a notoriously tough graduate program and create a professional network that enabled me to land the position I have now.”

After graduation, Kaytlin worked at an environmental consulting firm for a year before applying to graduate school hoping to kick start her career in GIS. She completed the grueling one-year graduate program at the University of Redlands which is unique in its ties to a company called Esri, the company behind ArcGIS, the most prolific enterprise GIS software used globally. Many of the professors at the university also worked at Esri.

Kaytlin then took a job in Houston using GIS to prepare offshore drilling operations with emergency response plans. She was part of a team that deployed a completely disconnected GIS on an icebreaker ship that sailed up to latitude 82 “I got to see polar bears,” she shares. Next, she took a job with a company in Austin, Texas where she implemented field data collection applications in conjunction with enterprise transportation asset management systems.

During the pandemic, she was inspired by the mapping that was being done to keep people safe and stay informed about the new virus. “I reached out to my network and was able to land my dream job of configuring applications very similar to those COVID-19 dashboards we all became familiar with,” she recalls.

Kaytlin now works for Esri in its professional services department as a GIS technical consultant, building mapping applications for a wide variety of customers from departments of forestry to airports to state health departments. The primary objective of GIS technology is to make the most out of resources, a central tenet of the sense of environmentalism she learned at Sweet Briar. She proudly flies the Sweet Briar flag outside her home office in Austin.

“I am forever grateful for the late (and great) Dr. Dave Orvos at Sweet Briar who encouraged me to explore the world, and Dr. Rebecca Ambers and Dr. Robert Alexander for teaching us how to care for the earth through policy and technology and become a beacon of hope in these challenging times for our environment and ourselves.”