Meet the Keystone GIS Leadership Team

Phil has been practicing GIS since 2005, beginning as a 911 addressor and IT support for the Department of Public Safety in Crawford County, PA he honed his skills until he was later hired by Loudoun County, VA in 2016 as their Centerline Coordinator. To assist with a family illness, he relocated back to Crawford County, PA in 2018 where they welcomed him back with a newly created position of GIS Manager. Phil brought back experience with enterprise GIS and a new interest in python scripting. He quickly established Crawford County to be one of the fastest growing GIS systems in NWPA. He also assisted the Northern Tier (10 county public safety region) to prepare and establish their GIS data to be NG911 compliant. His love of GIS also branched him out to be a GIS instructor for the Assessors Association of Pennsylvania, a region 1 director for the GIS County Pros organization, GIS presenter for various organizations and conferences, and a NWPA GIS Conference committee member (which he continues to hold this membership to this day).

Wanting to further advance his GIS knowledge, in 2022, he accepted a new job as GIS Analyst for Duquesne Light Company in Pittsburgh PA, where he utilizes his experience with ArcGIS Enterprise, database management, and of course, python to work with GIS and electric utility. In 2024, he moved over to the IT side of Duquesne Light Company, and uses his blend of IT and GIS to provide assistance where he can. He enjoys being a python and GIS evangelist and assisting fellow GIS practitioners along the way. In 2019, he was awarded the Excellence in GIS Award from the County GIS Professionals Association of PA. When Phil isn’t mapping his way around, he enjoys trivia, movies and live music, especially anything produced in the 1980s. He is excited to join a team of GIS practitioners within Keystone GIS and can’t wait to see what we can accomplish!

Kevin Colaizzi is a Senior GIS Analyst at the Monroeville Office of Civil and Environmental Consultants, Inc (CEC). He has more than 15 years of experience with GIS based projects and database management. Kevin’s work has encompassed numerous GIS based projects, including facility wide GIS system setup, sanitary and storm sewer setup/data management, and natural gas line systems conversion to a GIS system. Kevin’s project experience also covers a wide variety of client types including private, non-profit, and government.

Kevin’s passion for GIS started at California University of Pennsylvania where he earned a B.S. in Geography with a concentration in planning and GIS and a B.A. in Earth Science with a concentration in meteorology. He also completed a certificate in GIS through Penn State University.

Tatiana Bogatova, Ph.D., a native to Sochi, Russia, is the Data Center and GIS Team Administrator at the Erie County Department of Planning and Community Development. In this role, Dr. Bogatova oversees the work of the GIS team that supports GIS projects requested through the Data Center by municipalities, partners, businesses, other organizations. The Data Center is an economic development research arm of the Erie County that offers various information and evaluation services to the local community and beyond to support grant application efforts, track key indicators and outcomes, and provide economic impact analysis. The goal of the Data Center is to offer research, analytics, and spatial intelligence services for a wide range of local, regional, an national decision makers.

Tatiana attended Sochi State University and earned a master’s degree in Economics and Management. She earned MBA degree and a Ph.D. in Organizational Learning and Leadership from Gannon University. She worked with numerous organizations, private and public, to evaluate their program outcomes, establish key performance indicators, and support organizational performance improvement efforts. She co-authored a book “Improving performance in service organizations: How to implement lean transformation.” She is currently completing a GIS coursework at Penn State. Having great appreciation for data and being new to the GIS community Dr. Bogatova is excited to get to know the people, tools, and methods that changing the way she thinks about data.

Dave is a certified Geographic Information System Professional (GISP) with 37 years of experience and has led local government and environmental GIS projects throughout the United States.

Dave has been with GeoDecisions since it was originally formed in 1986 and has seen the tremendous amount of change in terms of technology and the benefits that GIS can bring to all Pennsylvanians.

Dave is a past president and secretary of PAMAGIC (Keystone GIS) and is currently serving as a Board Member. Dave has been an active member of the PA GIS Conference planning committee and Membership and Outreach committee.

Sarah Baughman is the GIS Lead at the Markosky Engineering Group, Inc. based out of Ligonier, PA. With almost 10 years of experience in the GIS field, she is in charge of data management and the GIS standards at Markosky. She also completes all of the mapping and analyses for the cultural resources department and assists with other GIS work throughout all the other departments in the company. Projects Sarah has worked on range from major US Forest Service surveys to archaeological excavations and mapping for local historical societies.

Sarah graduated from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Geography with a concentration in GIS/Cartography and a B.A. in Anthropology with a concentration in Archaeology. Since then, she has worked at Markosky doing both and also has participated in various organizations. She is a member of the Society of Pennsylvania Archaeology, where she is also a board member of the Westmoreland Archaeological Society chapter. She is also chair of the Professional Development Committee at Keystone GIS.

When she has free time - she spends it reading books, playing pool, going to trivia nights with friends, touring breweries and distilleries, going to museums, and going on adventures with her rescued coonhound, Chief.

Nettie serves as the GIS Services Manager for the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance (NEPA) Transportation Division, designated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Carbon, Monroe, Pike, and Schuylkill counties. In this role, she is the GIS lead responsible for supporting the NEPA MPO Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP), Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), Title V and Environmental Justice, Functional Road Classification and the Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP).

She earned her GIS Professional (GISP) endorsement from the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI). She is a certified Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 107 UAS Pilot and serves on the Pennsylvania Drone Association’s Community and Relations Committee, supporting drone advocacy, public policy and awareness by means of a PA Drone dashboard.

Nettie also serves on the PennDOT Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Advisory Committee. In addition, she is a Planning Committee member for the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) GIS for Transportation (GIS-T) Symposium, supporting the GIS-T Task Force with dashboards of event attendees, social media and photography. She is also a member of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Keystone GIS, and the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA).

She was featured in Esri ArcNews as a GIS Hero, “A GIS Innovator Pursues Her Mappiness” and her Colonial Pipeline Cyber Attack Outages Application was published in Esri Map Book Volume 37, additionally her adoption of ArcGIS StoryMaps was published in the Pennsylvania Township News Magazine.

Nettie is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geography (GIS) from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. She has deep passion for GIS technology and looks forward to collaborating with fellow geospatial professionals to advance innovative solutions and drive impactful projects that benefit the Commonwealth.

When Nettie is not flying her drone Lucy, she can be found trail riding her horse GeoDiesel, exploring the beauty of Northeastern Pennsylvania with her bernedoodles Grace and Rocky, while tending to her ducks and garden with her soulmate Josh.

Bobby Karimi has his PhD in Geology/Geophysics and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences department. His primary research interests include Tectonics, Structural Geology, Geophysics, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Remote Sensing (RS). His overall research interests are broadly within the realms of geophysics and structural geology/tectonics, and my approach is quite interdisciplinary in nature; I apply geodetic technologies and techniques, including GPS, GIS, and Remote Sensing (e.g., airborne/satellite LiDAR, unmanned aerial systems, etc.), numerical and computational methods, geophysical surveying (e.g., seismic, electrical, magnetic, gravimetric, and GPR) techniques, and traditional field- and lab-based methods to my research areas of interest in landslide hazards, fracture networks (particularly for groundwater flow) and analysis, and tectonics. Overall, his interests related to GIS/RS/Geodesy stem from the use of such systems, sciences, and technologies in addressing environmental and Earth system concerns.

Dr. Karimi currently serves as the Director of the Center for Geographic Information Science (GIScience) at Wilkes University, where he manages GIS-related software licensing for students/faculty, consults with researchers on GIS/RS methods to solve different types of geospatial problems, and is also the creator of a Certificate in GIScience (approved 2020) and co-creator of a Certificate in Data Science (in-development). Furthermore, he serves as the College of Science & Engineering representative to the Information & Technology committee, and is a co-chair of the General Education Committee. He is extremely passionate about education and advancing his pedagogical techniques and approaches to include more geospatial skill development.

Joe Livoti II is the GIS Administrator at the Township of Hampton and brings with him over 10 years of experience where he is responsible for all things GIS including integrating GIS into daily workflows, setting up and administering a municipal level drone program, and managing the data collection the Township performs. He also manages many other Information Technology programs as needed for the Township. Prior to his position, he worked for Lawrence County as a GIS Planner for the Assessment office. He graduated summa cum laude with his BA in Geography with a concentration in GIS/Cartography from IUP and followed that up with a Masters in GIST from the University of Southern California. He is also the Formal Designee for the Senate Appointee: Elected Local Government Official – Suburban Community on the PA State Geospatial Coordinating Board and is on the conference planning Committee for the Northwest PA GIS Users Group (NWPAGUG).

Joe has worked with both the staff and outside vendors to make the Township one of the more technologically innovative in the state. The Township’s GIS program is nearly unrivaled at the municipal level in the state of Pennsylvania. His outside the box approach has streamlined many outdated and antiquated approaches, combined various programs, and brought the Township in line with the emerging technologies. His integration of the GIS into the daily workflows of staff has been transformative.

In his free time (which is rare due to having a rambunctious 11 y/o daughter), Joe loves to read, do things with his daughter Crysania, sit on his front porch, play video games, train and teach Krav Maga, and of course watch football - Go Broncos, Trojans, and Crimson Hawks!

I am the Head of the  Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps & Geospatial Information  and an Associate Professor of Geography at The Pennsylvania State University. My research interests and experiences are diverse and span the fields of geographic information science and remote sensing, historical cartography, landscape ecology and conservation, human geography and mapping, and technological innovation

Prior to my arrival at Penn State I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Montana State University where I was working with the U.S. Department of Interior’s North Central Climate Science Center on the ecological impacts of climate and land use change in the Northern Rocky Mountains. I have a long history of working for and with the U.S. Department of Interior National Park Service and continue to be interested in biodiversity conservation and natural resource management in the context of global change.

I and my family live in State College, PA and enjoy recreating outdoors. We have an eclectic and growing list of pets consistent with the interests of an 8 and 10 year old that keep life interesting.

Joella is a Senior Water Resources Engineer at the Pittsburgh Office of CDM Smith, Inc.  She has more than 21 years of experience with GIS, Remote Sensing, database management, and stormwater engineering. Joella’s area of specialized experience includes Hyperspectral Imagery, LiDAR processing, Flood Protection, and developing tools which expedite parameter development for watershed modeling utilizing GIS software.

Joella spent her first 20 years of work in stormwater management in Florida and has held positions at County and state agencies as well as private consulting firms.  Joella has a GIS Certificate from the University of Florida, is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP), a Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM), and a licensed Professional Engineer (FL).  Joella’s dedication to GIS started at the University of Florida where she earned a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering and Masters in Agricultural Engineering focusing remote sensing of hyperspectral indices utilized to determine environmental impacts on citrus trees. She has recently relocated to Pittsburgh to enjoy the mild climate, beautiful scenery, and changing seasons.  She is excited to start integrating with the GIS professional network in Pennsylvania.