Hello 2026 WAGISA Members,

Thank you for being part of the Washington GIS Association. Because of your energy and involvement, 2025 was another wonderful year for our community. Our annual conference at UW Tacoma brought together more than 350 attendees across 90 sessions, and we are now approaching 400 active members. We also had close to 15 sponsors represented at our conference. A special shout‑out to our Young Professionals SIG—new faces join every week, and it’s been inspiring to watch that group grow.

I’m deeply grateful for your continued participation, volunteering, and support. Our team is already hard at work planning the 2026 Washington GIS Conference, and we look forward to welcoming you to the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue from May 19–21.

This year, one of my goals is to continue strengthening our membership and increasing participation across all our committees and groups. We also have several committee chair openings we hope to fill, including:

• Membership
• Technology
• Community Engagement

Later in this post, you’ll find a brief overview of each committee. You can also find meeting times on our Event Calendar. If you’re curious about getting involved, I’d love to hear from you—feel free to reach out at President@wagisa.org.

Most of all, I hope WAGISA continues to be a welcoming home for students, new professionals, and seasoned experts alike—a place where people can learn, connect, and grow together.

Thank you again for everything you bring to this community.

-Taylor Dixon, 2025-2026 WAGISA President

WAGISA Board

Taylor Dixon, President

Taylor Dixon is a Senior GIS Analyst for Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). A 2012 graduate of the University of Washington's GIS degree program, he interned with the City of Bothell before joining SPU, where he has worked ever since. He volunteers his GIS skills for various organizations, politicians, and sports blogs. His hobbies include soccer, video games, sports, debating music and movies, riding roller coasters, and driving in the mountains.

Darci Smith, Vice President

Darci Smith brings over a decade of experience in the GIS industry. Her background spans a variety of industries including consulting, local government, and public utilities. As the Utilities GIS Lead for City of Bellevue Utilities she leads a small team of GIS professionals responsible for maintaining the utilities enterprise data. Darci holds a Master of Science degree in GIS from Idaho State University and a BA in Geography and Natural Resources Management from Western Washington University. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family, being outdoors with her dogs, and camping at the ocean whenever she gets the chance.

Christina Chelf, Past President

Christina Chelf is a GIS professional with over 15 years experience and has been on the board for 7 years. Currently she serves as the GIS Manager for City of Tacoma where she leads a team of 8 that is responsible for providing maps, spatial analysis, and data management for city staff. Christina helped lead the creation and enhancement of the Tacoma Equity Index, a set of tools that help staff visualize and operationalize equity in the prioritization of policies, programs, and resources. She loves to be outdoors playing Ultimate Frisbee, running, backpacking, or gardening and when it's too cold out she creates and sells clay earrings.

Elisabeth Leaf, Secretary

Elisabeth Leaf has a diverse career spanning GIS, asset management, urban planning, teaching, and construction plan review. She is currently a Senior GIS Analyst for Tacoma Water, where she maintains the internal GIS system for the utility through data management, collaboration with internal GIS users, quality control, and spatial analysis. Elisabeth holds a Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Washington, Tacoma. When she’s not meticulously crafting and updating utility maps, you’ll likely find her exploring new destinations, capturing moments through photography and sketching, and indulging in her passion for cartography.

Emily Pitman Handy, Treasurer

Emily is the current WAGISA Treasurer and has served on the board since 2021. She currently works for the Washington Department of Natural Resources in the Recreation and Conservation Division. When she's not at work, Emily enjoys rock climbing and hanging out with her partner Brent and dog Marco.

Leslie Carman, Member-At-Large

Leslie is a GIS Analyst II with Thurston County Geodata in the Information Technology department where she has been working with an amazing team of coworkers for almost 7 years. She supports multiple county departments, including Public Works, Emergency Management, Medic One, and the Sheriff’s Office and has become the go-to plotter troubleshooter. Leslie has served on the WAGISA board and as the Professional Development Committee lead for the past 4 years. In her free time, you can find Leslie admiring maps, spoiling her two cats, exploring the Pacific Northwest (with a map of course), and participating in all the fiber arts (knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing, etc.).

Micah Gelber, Member-At-Large

Micah is the Navy Region Northwest Emergency Management GIS Specialist and has been an active volunteer with the Washington GIS Association (WAGISA) since 2021, serving on the Board since 2023. He currently serves as the Young Professionals Special Interest Group (YPSIG) Lead/Coordinator and leads the DTA Student Competition, after previously contributing as Community Engagement Lead and Marketing & Design Team Lead. Outside of GIS, Micah is a multi-instrumentalist and recording artist who has been actively involved in the PNW’s vibrant music scene for over 10 years.

Sheena Harms, Member At-Large

Sheena has over 12 years of professional experience in GIS which has taken her from archaeology, to city planning, to private forestry. Her current work as a Data Analyst for the Green Diamond Resource Company focuses heavily on remote sensing and change detection. She has been on the WAGISA Board since 2021, originally serving as Secretary. Outside of work, she is active in her community through PTSO leadership and a scholarship committee, and enjoys hiking, traveling, reading, and spending time with her three children. 

Kevin Le, Member-At-Large

Kevin is a Geospatial Demographer in Labor & Industries’ SHARP program, a unique occupational safety and health research department studying causes and occurrences of work related injuries impacting Washington workers. He focuses on bringing in a GIS lens to understand occurrences of injuries across space and how geography impacts access to receiving appropriate care. Outside of work, he enjoys painting miniature Dungeons and Dragons figures and building Gunpla model kits.

Max Mousseau, Member-At-Large

Max Mousseau is the GIS Administrator for the City of Des Moines and strives to find ways to practice the idea of learn, do, teach. Having been born and raised in, and completing his undergraduate and master’s degree the Pacific Northwest, he continues to be proud to call the area home. Outside of work, house projects, and fulfilling his duties as a Board member for WAGISA and chair for its WGGL group, he enjoys various hobbies including flying, fabricating, spending time with his colleagues and closest friends, bird hunting with his dog, and, mostly, travelling far and wide with his wife.

Ann Vasko, Member-At-Large

Ann’s involvement with cartography began at the University of Southern California as a geology undergraduate extending for over 30 years in varying capacities. She earned a Master’s degree in Earth Sciences from Montana State University, Bozeman and GIS certification from University of Denver. For the last 8 years Ann’s been designing fiber optic routes creating online and off-line maps for permitting, construction and final records. Ann’s role at WAGISA includes planning the annual conference, leading the volunteer committee,  and co-chairing the Membership and Registration Committee. Outside of work she enjoys spending time with family, knitting, gardening and traveling.

Membership

Members of WAGISA gain access to our network of GIS professionals and can choose to get involved in our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and our committees to focus on career development and help chart the future of our organization!

Special Interest Groups

Drones

The purpose of this Special Interest Group is to increase and share technical knowledge for participating members, to create and understand strong workflow integration with Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) data and to leverage geospatial analysis to solve problems. Join our mailing list!

Washington Local Government GIS Leaders

The WGGL (pronounced “wiggle”) group was formed to provide a forum specifically for GIS leaders in local government. Membership of WGGL is composed of GIS Supervisors (Managers, Coordinators, Directors, and Department Heads) working at City, County, and State organizations in Washington State. The group acknowledges that leadership is not conferred by (nor constrained to) a job title, but comes from all across the GIS and government enterprises.  The WGGL group promotes: open collaboration to help solve uniquely government problems, active participation, sharing insights and resources, growing leadership skills, and improving overall communication among GIS leaders across the State of Washington. Email wggl@wagisa.org to get involved!

Young Professionals

The Young Professionals Special Interest Group is centered around helping GIS professionals in the early stages of their career network with peers, get connected to job resources and opportunities, and set up ways to get further involved in WAGISA. We do this through regular virtual and in-person events and even have our own Discord Server! To be clear, you do not have to be young in age to join us, just young in your GIS journey! Check out our Interest form to join the mailing list and be invited to the Discord!

Committees

Technology

The Technology committee’s primary role is to ensure that the organization has all of the software, platforms, and security it needs to function effectively and safely. It is, like the Nomination Committee, determined by appointment by the president. It can be a fun, challenging role in the organization. It’s a great way to increase one’s responsibility with the organization while still learning the ropes!

Marketing

The marketing committee is responsible for public announcements and keeping WAGISA visible on social media. If you like to tweet, use Instagram or LinkedIn, write press releases, develop graphics or generally chat about how great this group is, you are made for this committee! Get in touch with us!  You can email us at:  marketing@wagisa.org 

Summit Scoop

The Summit Scoop is WAGISA’s blog, sharing GIS happenings around our state and highlighting our fabulous conference sponsors! We are always looking for fresh content and ideas to share with our members, and you can even earn GISP points for contributing an article! Check out our published articles and reach out to Committee Chair Heather Glock at hglock@esri.com to get involved.

Membership

The membership committee keeps records on membership, award winners, and conference attendance records. This committee is also heavily involved with setting up registration for our annual conference. If you’d like to know more, reach out to Committee Chair Stephen Beimborn at stephen.beimborn@seattle.gov. 

Nominating

The nominating committee is responsible for coordinating the recognition of our members through various awards as well as running the annual election of board members. The Nominating Chair is appointed by the president and the committee is primarily made up of board members not running in that current year’s elections. Find out more at https://wagisa.org/Awards. 

Finance

The finance committee is responsible for managing the money. Typically before joining this committee, you are active in other areas of WAGISA to get a sense of how money works for our group. We are fiscally conservative and primarily pay for the conference and workshops from our resources on a break-even basis. We also manage CDs that pay for scholarships and the conference reserve fund.

CEC

The community engagement committee handles outreach to community organizations, schools and colleges, and organizes workshop events. Check out our Community Resources page!

Professional Development

The Professional Development Committee brings workshops to the yearly WAGISA conference as well as other training opportunities throughout the year such as Summits. Meetings are at noon on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Subcommittees may meet more frequently, especially as we approach events.You can reach the Professional Development Committee chairs at workshops@wagisa.org and sign up for the committee by using your WAGISA account and/or sending an email. You can find more information, including past events, here: https://wagisa.org/page-18164

Conference

The conference committee has the big task of planning and organizing each year's annual event.  We host approximately 300 attendees and it takes an army of volunteers to make it happen. There is always room for another person! If you would like to be a part of the process, please email the Conference Coordinator at cc@wagisa.org.

Health of WAGISA and Beyond!

Finances

Our finances are very healthy! We have about $130,000 in the bank. Most of our income comes from our annual Conference in addition to our year-round and conference sponsors. This money will go back into our conference to directly benefit our members. We also hope to spend some of it on additional events and seminars to bring even more value to WAGISA members.

Membership

As of writing, we have a total of 398 members! Our members span from students and recent graduates to analysts and managers of GIS firms and tribal, local, state and federal agencies. Our membership grows throughout the year, with the largest growth occurring around the annual conference.

2025 Accomplishments

In 2025, some of our biggest accomplishments included:

• We transitioned the 24-25 Young Professionals Initiative into its own special interest group run for and by young professionals. 
• The board passed several bylaw updates aimed at providing more fairness, transparency around the election of board members. 
• We recognized Stephen Beimborn as GIS person of the Year with the Summit Award.

2026 Plans/Intentions

As we continue into 2026, much is in store for WAGISA. We hope to increase participation of the committees listed above and fill key vacancies. We also plan to implement new platforms and technologies to continue maintaining the health and knowledge base of our organization as we continue to grow. Finally, we are excited to plan more events for our members and potentially support the events of our fellow professional GIS organizations in our region.

2026 Annual Conference

Our Board and dozens of volunteers are hard at work planning our annual conference, with so many moving parts to fill out a full day of hand-on workshops and two days of education sessions and networking opportunities. We could always use extra help! If you are interested, please email our Conference Coordinator at cc@wagisa.org to join the conference planning committee.

We plan to open registration very soon. Check out our Conference Details Page to sign up for our mailing list to be notified when registration opens. We can’t wait to get everyone together again!

Final Thoughts

We hope this has been an informative overview of the current state of WAGISA. To stay in the loop, make sure you are signed up for our mailing list!

Finally, we have a monthly Board Meeting the second Thursday of every month from Noon until 1PM via Zoom that is open to all WAGISA members. Our next board meeting will be April 9th at Noon! Hope to see you there!