I have been asking GIS leaders the same question for years...

[IzabelaMillerGC]

Not in a survey.

In conversations — 60+ of them, recorded, transcribed, and eventually turned into my book - The Science of GIS Leadership.

The question was simple: what are you most proud of?

I expected to hear about projects. Programs built from scratch. Budgets fought for and won. Systems that outlasted the politics around them.

That is not what I heard.

Every leader I interviewed — without exception — pointed to a person.

Someone they had developed. Someone they had believed in before that person believed in themselves. Someone who went on to lead something the original leader could never have led alone.

I have been thinking about this pattern a lot lately.

Because right now, the conversation in this community — and in every GIS organization I am in contact with — is about AI. About what it can do. About what it is replacing. About what happens to GIS professionals when the technical tasks that defined their careers become prompts.

It is a real question. It deserves a real answer.

And the answer I keep coming back to — the one I heard in 60+ interviews before any of us were talking about agentic AI — is that the great GIS leaders were never defined by the tasks they could execute.

They were defined by what they built around them.

I had a conversation this week with Gary Maguire — the inaugural Australian GIS Hall of Fame inductee — that confirmed it again. He said something I want to put in front of this community:

"As leaders, it is our responsibility to leave a legacy — not defined by the GIS platform or solution we built, but by the people we developed and lifted as the next generation of GIS leaders."

Gary said that at the end of a 90-minute conversation that covered integrity, trust, generosity, and what it actually means to lead well.

AI was not mentioned once.

And yet that conversation answered the AI question more clearly than anything I have read in an industry report this year.

So before July 12th — I want to ask this community directly:

What does a great GIS leader do that AI cannot?

Not what they should do. What do the great ones actually do — that no prompt, no model, and no agentic workflow could ever substitute for?

I would genuinely love to hear your answers before we meet in San Diego.

[GJameson]

I feel a great GIS leader builds and refines a vision for their organization and helps folks take one step forward. AI cannot build the partnerships with staff, vendors, technology, and processes. Leaders simplify or demystify GIS technology into a few questions that empower folks to answer and have them take a small step into the ecosystem. They bring value with conversations and relationships.

Example: Yesterday, it was shared that a staff member wanted a free survey option that reduced junk responses. Survey123 performs that and it's a quick add to the survey. Within 15 minutes, they had a working survey that I was able to ask them "what questions are you trying to solve?" We tweaked question styles on how to ask and showed off the visibility rules.  They felt much better about this year's survey than in years past.

[WilliamTarpai]

@EzraCheruiyot This is a wonderful post to reach out to you and your Kenyan GIS colleagues who are doing such incredible work to speed up development occurring in Kenya.  Spend some time understanding the importance of adding and improving data needed to improve Kenya's ranking against all 17 SDGs.   Incredibly Kenya is working to involve many youth voices, especially in rural Bomet County.

[EzraCheruiyot]

AI is built by people, and while it can process information faster than we can, it cannot replace the human connection that defines great GIS leadership.As GIS leaders, we're the ones who engage with communities, understand their realities, translate local challenges into spatial solutions, and ensure that the technology serves people not the other way around. We provide context, empathy, and judgment that AI simply cannot replicate.For example say a  map  can identify patterns, but it takes a GIS leader to ask the right questions, build trust with stakeholders, and turn those insights into decisions that improve lives. That's where our greatest value will always be.

[WilliamTarpai]

Thanks everyone for the quick and important discussion.   Check out the new ESRI training - THE POWER OF WHERE: Communicating with Maps - October 21 - December 2, 2026.   It will be interesting to see how many young Kenyan, Tanzanians and Ugandans will apply and work their ways through this training opportunity.   I'm sure it can help speed up much needed SDG success stories by the end of this decade.

[EzraCheruiyot]

Yeah sure it will go long way in equiping skills to learners and specilist as well