In today’s Character Spotlight, we discover a little more about one of GKiS’s awesome sponsors “SheMaps”
Company Name: She Maps
Location: Australia
Why did you get involved in Get Kids into Survey? Dr Karen Joyce, one of our co-founders, is passionate about the spatial industry, and getting more kids to understand the potential of the industry and the technology involved, beyond what they think it is, is important. Get Kids into Survey is also just a really fun brand to be working with.
What do you do? You are all about increasing the diversity in the STEM workforce. We do this by working with schools to run drone programs. This is STEM by stealth, as we weave into our programs a whole lot of information about the spatial industry, as well as providing real world applications, but the students often think they are just having fun flying drones!
How long have you been in the Survey Industry? Karen has been in the spatial industry as a remote sensing scientist for over 20 years.
How did you get into the Industry? When Karen was at Uni she chose her subjects by what would get her into the outdoors the most, and onto the Great Barrier Reef. With a love for the sciences and environmental monitoring in there as well, she was drawn towards remote sensing!
Funny Fact about you – Karen and Paul (our other co-founder) met when they were both serving in the Army. After Karen moved to Wellington in New Zealand, and being too cold for 2 years, they moved to Darwin, Australia in the tropics – from the freezer to the frypan!
Favourite piece of kit and why? Definitely drones! They are just so versatile and have enabled Karen to get highly detailed spatial data of her research sites.
Favourite Survey technique and why? Karen loves being able to set up a drone mapping mission on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef, and having her drone fly an autonomous mission, collecting data. It is just so satisfying to be able to work with this technology, to do something I only dreamed of being able to do when I started at Uni.
Your website: www.shemaps.com
If you have a character; how did you choose and what does he/ she/ thing represent? Mean to you? We have Dronie – She is currently having a children’s book written about her adventures around Australia. Dronie represents all the women who have challenged themselves to overcome adversity and industry stereotypes and succeed in the STEM workforce.