Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri, the world’s sixth largest privately held software company. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California, Esri is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in geographic information systems, or GIS, pioneering innovative solutions for working with spatial data. The company transformed landscape architecture as well as urban and regional planning and revolutionized the science and technology of geographic data collection.
Esri has more than one million users in over 350,000 organizations representing government; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); academia; and industries such as utilities, health care, transportation, telecommunications, homeland security, retail, and agriculture.
Dangermond is recognized not only as a pioneer in spatial analysis methods but also as one of the most influential people in GIS. He actively manages Esri and is closely connected to projects, clients, and company vision. He takes a leadership role in national and global initiatives to facilitate standards for data access and sharing across agencies and organizations. He is personally committed to applying GIS methods for environmental stewardship and sustainable communities.
Dangermond is the recipient of numerous fellowships, honorary degrees, and awards. He has authored hundreds of papers on GIS in such diverse fields as photogrammetry, computer science, planning, environmental science, and cartography. He delivers keynote addresses at meetings and conferences around the globe. Jack and his wife, Laura Dangermond are also responsible for the protected ecosystem known as the Jack and Laura Dangermond preserve, a 24,000-acre parcel on the California coast north of Santa Barbara.
Dangermond's current work is focused on helping organizations deploy spatial data in enterprise environments, Web-based services, and mobile computing systems as well as enhancing applications, models, and tools that can be used for optimized routing, intelligent site selection, crime and disease analysis, location-based services, infrastructure management, public safety, and homeland security.