Jack Dangermond (1945–), president and founder of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), was one of Steinitz’s students at Harvard. He was studying landscape architecture but was also keenly interested in the work at the Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis. After graduating in 1970, he used SYMAP to start his company—Esri—which is now the world’s leader in GIS technology.
Jack Dangermond is also one of the principal advocates for geodesign and serves with his company to support the emergence of geodesign. His sponsorship of Esri's annual Geodesign Summit serves as the focal point for those active in the cultivation and dissemination of the geodesign agenda in education, government and industry.
One of Dangermond’s longtime dreams has been to use the science developed by Goodchild and others, coupled with the design framework developed by Steinitz and his associates at Harvard, with computer technology to represent geography (geospatial information) as a platform for doing design—geo design.