UMIAQ Environmental has promoted Josh Fortin to GIS Manager, a leadership role with responsibility for growing GIS implementation and managing a professional team.
Josh began his UMIAQ Environmental career in 2024, a period that has been “one of the most rewarding experiences” of his professional career. Over the past two years, Josh has developed systems and capacity for demonstrating the value of maps and spatial analysis for each step of project lifecycles. As GIS Manager, he looks forward to developing new products and services for UMIAQ Environmental clients and their projects.
“Josh’s expertise and drive built our GIS services and team from the ground up. These tools transform our project outcomes, and with Josh leading the charge, our clients directly reap the rewards.” – Emily McDonald, Policy and Permitting Division Manager.
Josh can pinpoint the exact moment he became serious about maps: when he won the fifth grade geography bee! He went on to earn a B.A. in Geography with minors in data science and religious studies. He started working with GIS in college courses and followed up with an internship at the City of Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. His professional career in Alaska began at HDR, where he was part of the Port of Alaska Modernization Program, managing preliminary design data to create figures for the NEPA process and support agency consultation regarding the endangered Cook Inlet Beluga Whale, including developing mapping products of marine mammal observations.
“I really enjoy looking at the world through the lens of location and place,” Josh said. “Good maps tell stories about the world around us and how we interact with it. In our line of work, this looks like taking something complex, for example a planned infrastructure project, and making maps that answer questions about it – What is nearby? Where is impact occurring? What resources may be affected? Answers are provided by a visual product that conveys the story of this project to the audience. Maps can do this storytelling in a very unique and efficient way that I think is really valuable.”
In addition to successfully championing GIS capabilities at UMIAQ Environmental, Josh is proud of his work on a project for client and parent company Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation. Supported by an EPA grant, the work team assessed historical contamination left behind by government agencies at NARL in Utqiaġvik. “It was a great opportunity to be to begin rectifying environmental injustice in the community we serve and work for,” Josh said. For his part of the project, Josh supported development of a work plan with figures, mobilized to the field to pre-stake well and soil boring locations, and oversaw production of report figures describing the characteristics and extent of fuel spill to inform next remediation phases.
Outside of work, Josh enjoys reading, hiking, playing Dungeons & Dragons, baking and cooking, and spending time with his cat Fiona.
UMIAQ Environmental is a subsidiary of UIC Commercial Services, a division of Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation. It provides consulting services throughout Alaska, including NEPA compliance, permitting, GIS analysis and mapping, and community and tribal engagement.