Images, Email, and Biographies

Biographies

President, Christy Powell is a Senior GIS Specialist with Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission, which is the managing partner for LinkGIS. While at NKAPC, she also taught GIS classes for Northern Kentucky University. Christy attended Murray State University and obtained degrees in Biology and Geosciences. She is a founding member of KAMP and former editor of the Legend (the KAMP newsletter). She has served on the Publication Committee and as Treasurer for KAMP. In 2006 she was presented the Service to KAMP award.

Immediate Past President, Stephen M. Berry is currently the GIS Coordinator for Clark County, Kentucky. He oversees map production and maintenance for the Clark County GIS Consortium, a cooperative effort of 5 local government agencies. Mr. Berry is a 1995 B.S. graduate in Geography of the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia. He has worked for the City of Athens, the University of Georgia, and Nolin RECC, Fort Knox, and Carlson Software in Kentucky. He has experience in GIS applications in transportation, local and regional planning, electric distribution systems, natural gas, water, and sanitary sewer, as well as software development experience. Mr. Berry was a member of the former GIAC, standards subcommittee for utilities databases.

Secretary, Scott Stepro coordinates GIS-related activities for Qk4’s transportation planning/design, environmental services, and site design divisions developing and maintaining critical path scheduling; and managing a 6,500+ activity Primavera E/C project schedule for the downtown bridges section of the Louisville Bridges Projects.

Currently working on transportation planning projects throughout the commonwealth of Kentucky as well as Indiana and Georgia. Recent work in the Louisville area includes Floyd’s Fork Park Transportation Study, GASB34 inventories for Jeffersontown, Portland Urban Renewal, MSD’s DRI project, New East End I-64 Interchange Study and the Rehl Rd/I-265 Interchange Study. Statewide GIS work includes FEMA Flood Map Modernization (DFIRM), Harrodsburg Bypass Study, I-66 Planning Study and Land Use Planning in Nelson County.

Scott’s Software expertise includes AutoCAD, Microstation, ArcGIS, 3d Analyst, ArcPad and Geoexpress.

Treasurer, Mark Wiljanen moves to the position of Treasurer after serving for a year as KAMP Secretary. Mark is currently Senior Associate for Information at the Council on Postsecondary Education, where he serves as lead technical contact on the three-person team that manages the Kentucky state-wide postsecondary ESRI site license. Before becoming a “geo-bureaucrat”, he taught at several universities around the country and served as director of three university GIS labs. Mark has more than twenty-five years of GIS experience in addition to an A.B. from Wittenberg University (Springfield, Ohio) and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wisconsin). GIS projects he has managed include an environmental analysis of the New York City water supply area in the Catskills, a demographic analysis of a public service market area in Chicago, and a proposed redistricting plan for the Illinois General Assembly. He has also served as a consultant to several municipalities and organizations on the acquisition and implementation of GIS. Mark has lived in and visited many wonderful landscapes scattered all across North America, but he’s proud to call Kentucky “home”.

Director, Michelle Ellington graduated from the University of Georgia in 1998 with a BA in Anthropology and a minor in Geology. She began working in GIS that same year as a GIS Technician for the University of Georgia’s Information Technology Outreach Services (ITOS) developing TIGER data for the Georgia DOT. She moved to Cary, North Carolina in 1999 and worked for Analytical Surveys, Inc. (ASI) creating planimetric checkplots and orthoplots for city and statewide planning just briefly before moving to Lexington, Kentucky in February, 2000.

Michelle has worked in many disciplines of mapping and GIS since moving to Lexington. She worked for Photo Science, Inc. (PSI) for three years producing IENCs for the Army CORP, developing SDS compliant data, planning flight lines for aerial mapping, and creating GIS data for local municipalities. In 2003 she gained employment with Fuller, Mossbarger, Scott & May Engineers, Inc. (FMSM) where she worked with FEMA floodplain mapping studies, underwater terrain modeling, and volumetric studies. Today Michelle is the GIS Analyst for the University of Kentucky’s Physical Plant Division where she is developing a GIS for the University that will be utilizing enterprise GIS, 3D GIS, and web mapping functionalities. She has been a member of KAMP since 2004, served as Treasurer from 2004 -2006, and maintains www.kampro.org.

In her spare time, Michelle is passionate about rock climbing and has been climbing since 1993. She has been active with fundraising to preserve climbing in Red River Gorge, Kentucky and received the 2006 Volunteer of the Year Award from the Red River Gorge Climbers’ Coalition. She also enjoys perennial gardening, cooking, music and, most of all, spending time with her husband, Ray, and two dogs, Tika and Maggie.

Director, Ben Koostra is a consultant with Limestone & Cooper, LLC, a geospatial information and technology company he founded in 2007. Previously, Ben managed research and development projects at the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department at the University of Kentucky. He was also a Project Engineer at LAW Engineering and Environmental Services, Inc. (now MACTEC), a leading engineering, environmental, and design consulting services company. A registered Professional Engineer in Kentucky, Ben has a BS from the University of Kentucky. He enjoys golf, aviation, and University of Kentucky athletics.