Today, we get to learn from Gloria Desanker, geospatial storyteller, founder, and Principal Consultant at Map Nerd Consulting.
More About Gloria
My name is Gloria Desanker, and I founded Map Nerd Consulting so that I could work as a Geospatial Storyteller to help others unlock the power of location-based insights. My services are designed to uplift community stories, especially communities of color. I offer tailored GIS solutions, visually appealing cartographic design, social media and marketing support, and storytelling guidance so that you can ensure your stories and experiences are authentically portrayed.
As a Black woman in the GIS, forestry, environmental science, and environmental education fields/sectors, I experience firsthand the lack of acknowledgment and representation these fields have of Black and brown successes, accomplishments, and feats. That is why I strive to change the white-dominant narrative of how data should be used, why data should be used, and how to use data and GIS to share an accurate representation of people of color in the U.S.
I take my clients through the full arc of mapping their story: story development, data collection and management, cartography and spatial analysis, graphic design and creation, and communications through Story Maps, infographic and report creation, or social media marketing. Data is only meaningful if a story is attached to it and we at Map Nerd Consulting believe there is a story in every map.
This past year, I joined the 2023 Cohort of the NAAEE CEE-Change Fellows where I am partnering with NorthStar of GIS whose mission is to advance intersectional racial justice, equity, and belonging in GIS, geography, and STEM. Together, we are developing GIS curriculum and training materials specifically for and by Black people and the Black African diaspora to change the narrative on how Black people and communities are portrayed in the context of climate change.
View Map Nerd Consulting's Linktree
Schedule a call with Gloria at https://calendly.com/mapnerd
How Maps Distort Our Perception of the World
Gloria’s Community Action Project with NAAEE CEE-Change Fellowship
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CREDITS:
- Producer: Tania Marien
- Music: So Far So Close by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License;
- SOLO ACOUSTIC GUITAR by Jason Shaw is licensed under a Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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TALATERRA combines "tala" (Icelandic for "to speak" and "to talk") with "terra" (Earth)—because speaking for our planet and telling its stories is what environmental educators do.
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