About Us

Darrell Danner, Ph.D.
President

Dr. Danner has a distinguished career as a City, MPO/Regional and State Planning Director. He was also a University Planning Professor and Private Sector planning consultant. He was an early developer of GIS at both the University of Missouri and Kansas University and has applied GIS and enterprise GIS in planning and other governmental applications. In addition to developing general use planning and engineering software packages designed for multiple local uses, he has developed very specialized software, which analyzes development driven capital demand, development, and costs. These software tools are used in planning, budgeting, fiscal impact analysis, and impact fee development. He is the holder of numerous specialized professional licenses and has received training in use of a variety of software programs including: ACCESS, AML, Avenue, Basic, Fortran, JAVA, ORACLE, Visual Basic, SAS and SPSS.

Education: Ph.D., Geography, Kansas University
B.A., B.S., and M.A., Geography, New Mexico State University

Affiliations: Vortacom, Inc. Alliance for Regional Stewardship Leadership Adjunct Professor, Kansas University

Robert Czerniak, Ph.D.
Project Review

Dr. Robert Czerniak is a distinguished University administrator, teacher, and researcher with over three decades of experience. His special interests include:  Town Planning and Community Development; Transportation Planning; Learning and Teaching (the creation of elegant learning situations); and Computer Cartography. As a University Vice President for research. he was responsible for the overall direction of important university research programs.

Education:   Ph.D., Geography, University of Colorado
M.A., B.A., Geography, Wayne State University

Affiliations: Association of American Geographers; American Planning Association; NM Geographic Information Council Transportation Research Board; Western Planners Conference NM League of Zoning Officials

John Raymonda, Ph.D.

Dr. Raymond has 31 years of experience in research and defense-oriented research, development, technology, and academia. His expert background includes high-energy chemical lasers, re-entry plasma simulation and analysis, environmental stress testing of radar systems, and chemical/biological hazard defense. His activities include:  Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Contaminations Survivability testing; design and testing of detectors for chemical and biological hazards agents; and test design and data analysis for the evaluation of a hazardous substance detection device. The chemical hazard detection device, and interferometer, is used in GeoStat security and other device applications.

Education: Ph.D., Physical Chemistry, University of Washington
Graduate Studies in Electrical Engineering, University of New York (Buffalo)
BA., Chemistry, Cornell University

Affiliations: Professional Engineering License, Mechanical Engineering, New York State 

Robert Nunley, Ph.D.

Dr. Nunley, Dean and Professor Emeritus, has over four decades of distinguished achievements in teaching and research. While his expertise focuses on quantitative methods of analyses, his other interests remain population, geo-demographics, Central America, and microcomputers. Fluent in Spanish, he also speaks German, Portugese, and Italian.

Education: Ph.D., Geography, University of Michigan
M.S., Geography, Marshall University
B.S., Marketing, Marshall University

Affiliations: Demographics Committee, U.S. Bureau of the Census

Tom Sullivan, AICP

 Mr. Sullivan is a systems' analyst who researches market studies for office, retail, residential, and resort developments. He has created development impact spreadsheet models to project population, housing, employment, tax generation, and other effects of development along with the creation of pivot table database systems for the County Housing Needs to represent 10,000 lines of housing data. Mr. Sullivan has also developed a property file database for the County from property appraiser data files. Along with project scheduling for a high school construction project, he has worked on a variety of computer mapping and parcel database projects.

Education: Graduate Studies, Urban/Regional Planning, Florida State University
B.S., Speech Communication, Florida State University

Affiliations: American Institute of Certified Planners, AICP 

Aditi Sarkar, Ph.D.

Dr. Aditi Sarkar has over two decades of experience as an architect, GIS specialist, teacher, and researcher. Her experience includes geospatial analysis of land-use, zoning and transportation planning projects and architectural and interior design services for banks, hopitals and educational institutions. Her interest lies in environmental justice and sustainable design.

Education: Ph.D., Urban Systems, Rutgers University+NJIT+UMDNJ;
M.S., Physics, New York University; M.Arch, New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Affiliations: Licensed Architect, State of New York.

Joseph Maestas, PE
Civil Engineer

Mr. Maestas has professional diversity gained from 27 years of experience in local, state, and federal transportation and in the areas of: team-based human resource management; customer-focused program management and accountability; planning, management systems, and research; and technology primarily in the transportation sector. He also has expertise in planning, program management, technology application and transfer along with contract management and quality management with an emphasis in community relations; marketing; stakeholder outreach; and public involvement. Mr. Maestas possesses effective interpersonal, oral, and written communication Bilingual skills.

Education: M.S., Civil Engineering, Arizona State University
B.S., Civil Engineering, University of New Mexico

Affiliations: Registered Professional Engineer; AZ & NM Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Council Institute; Who's Who of Hispanic Americans; Executive Council of Government Hispanic Employees

Timothy Smothers
GIS Manager

Mr. Smothers has over 25 years in traditional and classified GIS experience. His experience lies primarily at the local governmental level and the federal level with NIMA (National Intelligence Mapping Agency) now NGA (National GeoSpatial Intelligence Agency). Mr. Smothers has also prepared numerous Comprehensive Plans, infrastructure development, and complete GIS systems. Mr. Smothers is on both the National and State Geographic Information Councils and has held leadership positions for 7 years.

Education: B.S., Geology, University of Oregon

Affiliations: Arizona Geographic Information Council; National Geographic Information Council

Mr. Bill Marquino has nearly 25 years of experience in the computer hardware and software industry. During the last eight years, he has focused exclusively on IT development for very large law firms. This includes creating, managing, updating, and migrating databases, building data warehouses, and creating web-based applications and reporting tools. Programming expertise includes languages such as: ASP.NET, Visual Basic, vbScript, VB, JScript, Javascript, and XML/XSLT/FO.

Education: B.A., Political Science, New York State University
Graduate Studies, University of California (Los Angeles)

Affiliations: Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Kwon Ekstrom
Computer Programmer

Mr. Kwon Ekstrom has 8 years of experience with intranet reporting solutions and has worked with a variety of databases, standards, and programming languages. Core languages include Sun Java 2 (v1.3/1.4), Microsoft.net (VB/C#), and C/C++. Web standards include HTML4, XHTML, CSS, XML, DTD, SVG, XSL-T, and XSL-FO. In addition, he has experience with ASP and ASP.net, MS SQL Server, and IIS. Projects range from simple user input and lookup forms to multi-tier reporting systems with advanced security, including MS Active Directory.

Santiago Garcia
GIS Analyst

Mr. Garcia has over 10 years of experience as a GIS Manager and analyst at various agencies. He has been responsible for coordinating and organizing multi-agency GIS projects to increase access to and integrate databases and has also served as a former Webmaster for the Arizona Geographic Information Council and Arizona Cartographer's Office. Along with the development of intra/internet applications to access spatial and tabular data, Mr. Garcia is proficient using the following GIS software: ESRI ArcGIS, ArcIMS, ArcSDE, and ArcInfo Workstation.

Education: M.S., Biology, University of New Mexico
B.S., Natural Resource Management, Arizona State University

Patrice Clifford
Facilitator

Ms. Patrice Clifford has over 20 years experience in visioning, citizens participation, training, and conflict resolution. Ms. Clifford has conducted citizen's participation and visioning efforts in Arizona and New Mexico as well as throughout the nation. She is a well-known expert in her field and frequent speaker at planning conferences and is an experienced organizational development specialist with a proven background in meeting facilitation, training, and management consulting services for the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico and GeoStat, Inc. She joined the GeoStat team in 1999 and has participated on several projects including the innovative Dona Ana County, Las Cruces Comprehensive Plan which has received much attention for its use of GIS and the internet for its cutting edge applications.

Education: B.S., Bowling Green University

Affiliations: Certified Trainer for Mastering Meetings; Certified Trainer for Facilitative Leadership Mediator

Nicole Bayhan
GeoStat Administrative Assistant

Ms. Nicole Bayhan has over 4 years of fast-paced clerical and project tracking experience working with multiple data-sets and maintaining efficient software applications in an A&E office-based setting. With knowledge of MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Intuit, McLeod Systems, Innovative Technology, and Cisco Systems, Ms. Bayhan is efficient in utilizing proper office techniques in order to maintain a proficient office. With strong persuasion and debate skills as well as superb grammar and editing experience, she exhibits strength in oral and written communications as well as leadership and teamwork skills.

Education: B.A. & B.S. (IP), Microbiology/Criminal Justice, New Mexico State University '09

Mick McKelvey

Mr. Mick McKelvey has an established 20-year record of program, project, facility, and personnel management in high visibility operations. He is experienced in a wide range of diverse technical and managerial functions encountered in daily and contingency operations in Department of Defense remote location Secure Storage Facilities. His responsibilities include planning, organizing, and managing $1.5 million in building upgrades leading to a recap of $450K in annual external storage costs. He also co-organized the transfer of approximately 9 million pounds of sensitive classified reproduction and lithographic products from various secure storage sites in the United States; and organized and managed acquisition and remodeling of a 13,000 square foot building from the Air Force leading to an operational and secure storage facility as a $170K investment.

Education: B.A., Archaeology/Geography, California State University

Affiliations: Turlock ASIS Facility Security Management Area; Risk Management/Business Continuity Planning (ARM/BCP); ASIS Facility Security Design Program on Creative Leadership

Michael Noonchester

Mr. Noonchester is a senior adminstrator/manager with over 25 years of progressive experience in delivering strategic programs for difficult service products. Having proven his ability to coordinate complex construction and systems projects, generate and improve customer services, and manage complex public organization, with a solid research and multifaceted technical background, he is a creative, people-oriented leader with excellent communication skills.

Education: M.A., Political Science, Syracuse University
B.A., International Relations/Asian Studies, Brigham Young University

Erin Martin Ward

Ms. Ward has nearly three decades of experience in business research and services. She has a number of specializations and professional competence in the following areas:  Socioeconomic research and analysis; International software development; Bilingual software documentation; Survey preparation, compilation and analysis; Demographic estimates and projections; Revenue and employment projections; Market niche analysis; Business plans; Input-Output analysis; and Benefit-Cost analysis. She also has training in the use of a variety of econometrics software programs including IMPlan, GAMS, SPSS, and SAS.

Education: Ph.D. (IP), Technical Communications/Economics, New Mexico State University
M.A., Technical Communications/Economics, New Mexico State University
B.A., Technical Communications/Economics, University of Colorado

Affiliations: Border Trade Alliance - El Paso Foreign Trade Alliance

Steve Wolfe

Mr. Steve Wolfe has two decades of professional experience. His career has been based on finding and implementing creative solutions to solve business needs mainly in the areas of System Administration, Programming, Networking, Technical Support, and Point of Sale. His expertise includes a number of operating systems and technologies including Windows and Linux integration as well as skill in such languages as : Perl, C, PHP, Shell, ksh, bash, wget, curl, Expect, and Perl Web Automation. Mr. Wolfe also displays skill in networking; TCP/IP, Ethernet, and LAN administration tools Net-SNMP, Mrtg, Sendmail, Imap/Pop3, Webmail, Samba, Webmin, Apache, MySQL, and PostgreSQL serviers. His experience is diverse and numerous.

Education: B.S., Computer Science, University of Kansas