New to Esri YPN - Aspiring to Apply GIS in Conservation and Veterans Affairs

[Christopher_Mayes]

Hello everyone, my name is Christopher Mayes and I am new to the geospatial scene. I am pursuing a bachelors in wildlife biology but will be getting a certificate for GIS and geospatial technologies. With the courses I have taken for GIS I know I want my career to involve GIS in some capacity, I hope to apply it to conservation and possibly veterans affairs  as I am also a Marine Corps veteran. I look forward to following everyones journeys!

[RosemaryBoone]

Hi Christopher - nice to e-meet you! I think that's amazing you want to use GIS for veterans affairs. What does that look like in terms of analysis and projects you've worked on? Thank you for your service as well!

[Christopher_Mayes]

Thank you Rosemary, I haven't done anything yet since  I am just getting into GIS but my hope would be to maximize veteran benefits in terms of funding efficiency and assisting with policies/discussions for physical buildings that provide benefits and services to veterans as well as looking into more efficient ways to reach veterans and ensure they are getting and are aware of every benefit they are entitled to. I would attempt to use parcel data to assist with this.

[ChrisOxendine]

Christopher - It's a pleasure to meet you and welcome! Thanks for your service. I'm an Army Veteran and working at Esri. Here are two sites that provide some data on Veterans that you can use to explore in ArcGIS: 

Veterans Administration Data: https://www.data.va.gov/
Census Bureau Veteran Data: https://www.census.gov/topics/population/veterans/data/tools.html 

Best of luck on your journey! 

[Christopher_Mayes]

It is a pleasure to meet you as well and thank you for your service.Thank you for sharing this data as it will certainly come in handy!

[AbdulAzeezLawal]

Dear Christopher, I'm glad you are also pursuing a certificate program for geospatial technologies. It's an exciting field with a lot of growth potential.