Our Impact Areas
Workplace Values
We believe in being generous with our time, knowledge, and expertise. Our staff spend time volunteering, mentoring others in and outside of the office, and hosting and participating in community and educational events.
We encourage our staff to develop formal learning and research plans with up to 10% of their paid time. Recent project include experiments with machine learning, building internal project management tools, reading groups, Coursera courses, and trying various forms of serverless processing with Amazon Lambda. Some projects have resulted in new business, won awards, or been incorporated into our existing work.
Open source tools are key components in all of Azavea projects, and our staff has made substantial contributions to the ecosystems around open data, geospatial data processing, and operations tooling. In some cases, Azavea has open sourced entire products, including OpenTreeMap and Raster Foundry.
Open source Fellowships Everyone starts out a beginner. Azavea’s fellowship programs enable us to mentor the next generation of contributors in our field. Through the Summer of Maps Fellowship, students can do pro bono GIS analysis for non-profits while learning the professional skills needed to manage and complete two projects. The Open Source Software Engineering Fellowship matches entry-level software engineers with a mentor to make a substantial contribution to an open source project at Azavea.
Every year, we donate at least 2% of our profits to non-profit organizations that work in the following areas: Conservation & Ecosystems; Local Arts & Culture; Open Government, Open Data, Open Science, or Open Source; Sustainable Transportation; and Local Technology & Education. Each staff member allocates an equal portion of our profits towards the organization of their choosing.
Our B Corporation status emphasizes our commitment to the triple bottom line of social responsibility, sustainability, and profitability. Our values show up in big and small ways, from the composting buckets in our kitchen, to making the decision to turn down projects that don't align with our mission, to the benefits we provide to our employees.
Our Tech Stack