Vanessa Knoppke-Wetzel is a detail-oriented cartographer, analyst and designer that loves thinking about how to create and design products and utilize spatial data to tell visual stories in the best way possible. She also cares a lot about cartographic and spatial education, and has spent a lot of the past decade giving talks and hosting workshops, because she believes everyone can become a better analyst, designer, and storyteller - even if they never have been in the spatial industry.

Vanessa is a Senior Map Designer at Mapbox by day, but in her free time she also is a Director at Large for the North American Cartographic Information Society, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, the founder of #creativeCarto, and of course, one half of URhere. She also does non-mappy things: you can find her lifting weights, running, or enjoying the outdoors when not doing the above.

Chat with her on twitter @run_for_funner. Vanessa's portfolio is here.