Surveying Sydney Garcia
By Emily K. Dalton / @Sigh__Borg
You think you may know Sydney Garcia as PublicHealthMap’s Environmental Health Lead... However, the following personal account of her professional achievements may skew your perception! (positively!)
In 2016, I met Sydney Garcia by mere coincidence at our shared undergraduate alumni, St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, which boasts over 4,000 students. Although our encounter could be deemed almost statistically impossible, okay, highly improbable, we somehow connected in the same course that some eyewitnesses recount that I was doing poorly in. These claims (unsubstantiated) eventually resulted in a strong friendship and years of fruitful collaboration.
Sydney and Emily at the Guinness Storehouse bar in Dublin, Ireland July 2015
Not only did we team up over the years (by her choice) in our shared pursuit of a B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy, we even traveled across the world together through a sustainable development course focused on evaluating an intentional public-private partnership. The program we evaluated was between Heifer International, Dovea Genetics, and Dar din Dar, to promote gender empowerment through livestock ownership. Together, we followed their operations across Ireland, Hungary, and Romania to understand how they promote gender empowerment through livestock ownership. We also managed to have some fun along the way.
For reasons still unknown, Sydney continued to keep in communication with me as she pioneered the inaugural Geographic Information Systems (GIS) cohort at our undergraduate and went on to conduct the first GIS-related research project at our alumni at the time. Around this time Garcia began an odd fascination with human health as it relates to the environment; so much so that she continued on to obtain her Masters in Environmental Management at Duke where she also became Certified in GIS.
Sydney and Emily at a campus event at St. Edward’s University March 2016
Her focus on the mental effects and perceptions of populations in relation to green space somehow manifested in a master’s thesis which involved a collaboration between the Duke Nicholas School of Environment and the City of Austin. Her research has also involved Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) which despite my technical expertise, continues to elude me.
As of 2020, Sydney is the Community Planning Fellow for Texas’ National Park Service Rivers Trails and Conservation Assistance Program where she interacts with public servants at all levels to create equitable parks, trails, and preservation areas for communities to enjoy.
How she ended up at PublicHealthMaps is unclear at the moment, although…sources speculate that her team member, Emily Dalton, managed to convince her through a series of unprecedentedly misspelled text messages.
This is one of the maps from Sydney’s graduate school master’s project. It shows the city of Austin, Texas broken into census blocks on a level of tree planting priority based on public health & safety, air quality, environmental justice, water quality, critical places, forest replenishment, forest preservation & development impacts, and urban heat island layers.
In black is the layer of the city’s highest developed land that was being served with a green infrastructure initiative at the time. This was meant to show the vulnerability of the city and show that areas with high priority for trees may also be high priority for green infrastructure as well.
What will Sydney GARCIA bring as PublicHealthMaps’ new Environmental Health Lead?
Look for projects focused on Environmental Justice, the Social Determinants of Health, active transport, the built environment, and how location affects health, in particular the health of marginalized populations. Sydney’s work will truly showcase her GIS experience and passion for public health in the near future!
However cryptic Sydney's background may be, she is both a major asset to the PublicHealthMaps team, a true friend, and an all around great human being!
