Esri Community Member Spotlight: Tiffany Wu
This series of member spotlights features you and your peers here in Esri Community—the people playing a role in finding solutions, sharing ideas, and collaborating to solve problems with GIS. We’re doing this to recognize amazing user contributions, to model how Esri Community’s purpose is being brought to life, and to bring depth to this group of incredible people who may never meet in person, but who benefit from each other’s generous expertise.
Watch Tiffany's video interview in Kaltura.
Planting GIS in Montgomery Parks
With the strength of warmer days gradually overtaking winter’s cold grip, residents of Montgomery County, Maryland begin stirring to the promise of a soon-to-be greener world. For many in Maryland’s most populous county, that means spending more time at public amenities managed by the award-winning Montgomery Parks system. Hundreds of miles of trails, sparkling lakes, campsites, playgrounds, gardens, and a bustling host of other outdoor offerings connect people with the natural world in shared spaces distributed across the county.
Keeping up with the daily operations that make up such a vast spread of popular amenities is no small feat, even before taking the work of program expansion into consideration. To aid with this, GIS systems have been woven throughout the park and its features, providing streams of data that better equip staff, volunteers, and visitors with the information they need. And behind the wheel of the system’s upkeep and implementation are a mighty team of two who make up the Montgomery Parks Department’s GIS Unit.
Image: Tiffany and Keegan from the Montgomery Parks GIS Unit walk a Community Gardens
program staff member through how to use ArcGIS Field Maps to map a new garden.
Tiffany Wu (@Tiff) is Senior GIS Specialist at Montgomery Parks, where she makes up a full half of the GIS Unit. A former Dangermond Fellow with the National Audubon Society and current GIS Director for My Pit Bull is Family, Tiffany’s full-time role within the Montgomery Parks Department often sees her building technical applications and supporting department needs across different divisions and fields of discipline, including setting others up for success as they develop their GIS skills.
Among the Parks Department’s thousands of assets managed with the help of ArcGIS, Tiffany expresses special pride when discussing the Community Gardens program and the accomplishments it has achieved by using Esri’s location intelligence tools.
Serving Montgomery Residents Through Community Gardens
“The Community Gardens are a beautiful place within our county and Parks system.” Tiffany shares. “At all times of the growing season there may be blooming flowers, fruits, and vegetables that are tended to by gardeners, our residents, and our community members. The gardens provide a way for individuals and families to experience and enjoy nature, with opportunities to steward and take care of the land that gives back.”
Image: The Montgomery Parks Community Gardens Map makes it easy for residents
to find information about each garden location.
The Montgomery Parks Community Gardens program makes more than 500 garden plots available through fourteen regionally distributed garden locations. Through them, about 520 gardeners annually rent affordable growing space to cultivate fresh produce and flowers for themselves and their families. Volunteer opportunities, educational events, and other projects expand the number of people Community Gardens’ programming impacts throughout the year.
Tasked with supporting such a wide-reaching and important program, Tiffany and the GIS Unit wanted to increase the program’s efficiencies and effectiveness using ArcGIS. They began by mapping all of Montgomery Park’s community garden locations, in addition to individual plots and amenities like water cisterns and compost piles. ArcGIS Field Maps and ArcGIS Instant Apps became the Community Gardens team’s primary tools for both editing and maintaining data across the seasons.
Tiffany stated, “As the gardens, plots, and information were all incorporated in GIS, we discovered other ways to innovate and transform the program.”
As garden plots are shared spaces vulnerable to misuse, plant disease, and pests, the Community Gardens team regularly performs what had been a time-intensive inspection process to ensure plots are properly cared for. Previously carried out on paper forms and by manually emailing gardeners, they recognized an opportunity to transform their approach by partnering with Tiffany and the GIS Unit.
Reclaiming Garden Inspection Time with ArcGIS
In 2023, the GIS Unit and Community Gardens teams launched a hybrid approach to inspections to compare results. Some time was reserved for the typical paper and manual messaging method, while a portion of inspections shifted to using ArcGIS Survey123 and Microsoft Power Automate to digitally capture relevant inspection findings that would automatically submit results to gardeners. With a partial transition to the digital process that year, both teams were delighted to find the total time they dedicated to the inspection process dropped significantly without sacrificing quality. Emboldened by the results, they committed to a full digital and automation transition during 2024. That change reclaimed 24 percent of inspection time. This made an additional two weeks of time available for the Community Gardens team to focus on expanding its role in food systems-related initiatives, exploring program expansion, and learning how to better serve their local community.
Image: Screenshots of a garden inspections form in ArcGIS Survey123 and page from an
inspection report that would be automatically sent to a gardener.
What’s more, the improved communications process has led to a 29 percent decrease in inspection notices (from 1,400 to 1,000) being sent to gardeners for inadequate plot care or violations. The number of returning gardeners has climbed as well: 90 percent of people who rented plot space in 2024 signed up again in 2025, an increase over the previous season’s returning gardeners.
Image: The Community Gardens team and GIS Unit pose for an award photo during GIS Day 2023.
Ask the Community Gardens team about these changes and they’ll happily expound on the huge benefits they’ve personally gained, but also those experienced by gardeners they serve and garden volunteers they work with. While highlighting this work, the Community Gardens team presented during Montgomery Parks Geography Awareness Week. During the Parks Department’s 2023 celebration of GIS Day, their team was awarded the Excellence in GIS Award in recognition of their accomplishments and impact.
A GIS Journey Supported by Esri Community
When asked about her professional growth and the path that led her to Montgomery Parks’ GIS Unit, Tiffany includes Esri Community as a mainstay resource that’s fed her journey over the last six years.
“Esri Community has helped a lot with growing my GIS skills and development, for sure. I’ve learned more about all the apps our team works with on a daily basis because of Esri Community.”
She expanded, “The Esri Community has supported me in building technical applications and workflows, such as those involving ArcGIS Survey123 and Power Automate, which have been crucial for our Community Gardens program.”
Tiffany notes the platform’s influence not just on her past work, but on projects she’s actively engaged in. As a gathering space for peers and ideas, Esri Community has been instrumental in her professional network growth. It’s where she was exposed to an ArcGIS Experience Builder post about a Park Finder map for Arlington, TX written by Esri Community MVP @JeffreyThompson2.
Inspired by that project, Tiffany undertook building a similarly functioning Parks and Trails Atlas made in ArcGIS Instant Apps and Experience Builder and that launched at the end of April, 2025.
Reflecting on the value Esri Community has provided her and offers others, Tiffany commented, “It’s such a great platform and support system where you can really ask questions freely. … It’s always a great idea to post and see what answers folks have or if it helps others with similar questions. It’s also a great way to be involved and to connect with Esri staff.”
Tiffany Wu is a former Dangermond Fellow who now works as Senior GIS Specialist within a two-person GIS Unit at Maryland’s Montgomery Parks Department. She’s also the GIS Director for My Pit Bull is Family, a non-profit organization that works to advance dog-inclusive rental and insurance policies. You can read more about Tiffany’s non-profit work in Maps Help Animal Welfare Advocates Keep Pets and People Together.
