A lot has been made about Walz’s experience as a football coach. While I love a good football game, ahead of the VP debate, I am most interested to see how Tim Walz leverages his experience as a geographer.
As professor of geography for 20 years, let me be the first to say geography has a branding problem. Most people assume a geographer’s greatest skill is knowing the names of all capital cities – the ideal trivia teammate. I am not that kind of geographer, and will fail to bring my team trivia glory. While Mr. Walz may be better at naming capital cities that I am, from what I have seen, he is also not that kind of geographer.
Geographers are trained in synthesizing complex information to support decision making.
Walz has connected his background in geography to his career as a political leader. By his students accounts Walz was a masterful geography teacher, but more relevant to his current job interview, he effectively makes policy decisions by leveraging his skills as a geographer.
In 2023, Walz was the plenary speaker at one of the world’s largest global geography conferences, the ESRI User Conference. He talked about how his students used maps to predict the Rwanda Genocide, based on his lessons about interconnectedness and geographic skills for integrating map data on the environment, economy, and social vulnerability. He shared how he carried a tablet filled with real-time maps with him as governor, helping him deploy resources efficiently, and he showed maps that he used to deploy food resources in schools.
While an image of a geographer might be a someone adding labels to a map in a tweed jacket, today’s geographers are more akin to data scientists, specializing in technology like GoogleMaps, drones, and smartphone GPS. Geographers implement the geographic approach using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a powerful and fundamental software that underpins map data science and fuels all modern mapping. You probably used GIS recently as it is the backend of weather and delivery services and fueled the interactive dashboards used for COVID-19.
Walz is a GIS expert and as governor has used GIS to make decisions about everything from student food program to hazard management. An important skill for him to demonstrate in the upcoming debate is that can put decisions into a geographic context, connecting policy to the real-world where the consequences of decisions will take place.
To be sure, there is no training or perspective that will guarantee anyone is a good leader. Integrity, a service mindset, and ability to listen are just some of the other’s attributes required. However, it is useful to amplify that his training as a geography prepared him to make complex decisions.
No one hangs a shingle that says “geographer for hire.” As a result, the skills of a geographer are not particularly well understood. Not all map nerds are trivia wonks (though, yay for you if you are!). Yet, map nerds are key to a better world. Coaching football requires skills in team work, strategy, and comradery. But let’s also watch for skills in geography which should enable holistic, understandable, and implementable decision making.