Strategic Hires at OpenGeo Expand Management, User Support Capabilities
OpenGeo is a world leader in developing and supporting open source geospatial software, offering clients the most complete and compelling package of open source web-based geospatial tools available. The company recently announced that it has made a number of strategic hires to improve its ability to serve users and to help manage the growing business. Sophia Parafina joined OpenGeo as Director of Operations, Paul Ramsey as a Senior Consultant, Alyssa Wright as an Outreach Engineer, and Rolando Peñate as Design Lead.
Sophia Parafina brings over fifteen years of experience in the geospatial world to her role as Director of Operations at OpenGeo. Sophia previously founded Ionic Enterprise, a world leader in developing OGC standards and the first company to introduce truly OGC products to US markets. Ionic Enterprise was acquired by ERDAS (then Leica Geosystems) where Sophia served as the Director of Enterprise Architecture and Integration until she joined OpenGeo last month. Parafina now leads the Outreach Team at OpenGeo, dramatically enhancing the support that OpenGeo provides to users of the OpenGeo Suite.
OpenGeo President Chris Holmes says that the addition of Parafina is important to OpenGeo's development as a business. "Sophia has already added an incredible amount of value to OpenGeo," he said. "I know that she will continue to draw on her experience building Ionic Enterprise into a successful business as OpenGeo's Director of Operations."
Alyssa Wright, a new addition to the Outreach Team at OpenGeo, is a graduate of MIT's Media Lab and NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program She comes to OpenGeo with breadth and wealth of experience in information architecture, editing, graphic and interaction design, and project management.
In his new position of Design Lead, Rolando Peñate handles OpenGeo's interaction, graphic, and web design needs. Peñate previously acted as Director of Design at The Open Planning Project and holds a B.A. in Urban Studies and Sociology from Brown University.
Paul Ramsey is a co-founder of PostGIS and currently serves on the board of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Paul received the Sol Katz Award for achievement in open source geospatial software. He contributes invaluable expertise gained in over ten years of working with geospatial software. At OpenGeo, Paul leads consulting engagements, contributes to the software and support of the PostGIS database, and works with our business development team to improve communication about our open source offerings.
Holmes said that these new hires demonstrate OpenGeo's growing understanding of and focus on users' needs. "OpenGeo has always been serious about developing the core software that we support, and with the recent addition of Paul Ramsey, we now employ a core contributor to every component of the OpenGeo Suite. By bringing Rolando Peñate on board as Design Lead and adding Alyssa Wright to our Outreach Team, we're increasingly able to focus on usability and good design, building products that are more easy and enjoyable to use than any other geospatial options."
About OpenGeo
OpenGeo is a social enterprise working to build the best web-based geospatial technology. The company brings the best practices of open source software to geospatial organizations around the world by providing enterprises with supported, tested, and integrated open source solutions to build the GeoWeb. OpenGeo also supports open source communities by employing key developers of PostGIS, GeoServer, and OpenLayers. The company has a seven year history of providing successful consulting services and products to clients like Google, Tri-Met, Landgate, and the Open Geospatial Consortium. OpenGeo is the geospatial division of OpenPlans, a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that functions as a high tech social incubator. All of OpenGeo's revenue has been and will continue to be re-invested into innovative and useful software in support of the OpenPlans mission.
OpenGeo believes that open and accessible information empowers people to affect real change. The processes and success of the open source software movement inspire us to build a GeoWeb that can be an infrastructure for public good.