麻豆村

For Lisa Carter, mapmaking is storytelling.

"Capturing data in a visual format reveals things that wouldn't immediately be obvious unless you put it out on the map and then the story becomes clear," Lisa says. "What I like about working on this type of technology is the ability to bring those stories to life and to share them with more people."

Lisa began working as a senior product designer for Esri, the global leader in enterprise mapping software, in early 2025 and in a short time 鈥� she earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree from Dietrich College in 2017 and a master鈥檚 degree from the School of Computer Science in 2019 鈥� Lisa has made a career out of designing software to help people and businesses create better and more powerful maps.

At Esri, Lisa develops tools for Map Viewer, the web-based version of the company's flagship ArcGIS platform, which connects maps, apps and data to help customers make data-driven decisions more efficiently

Maps created using Esri technology are ubiquitous; Lisa, a lifelong Pittsburgh resident, remembered the range of places that she has noticed the words "powered by Esri" since she started working, including a map detailing power outages following a storm and as part of her volunteer work with U.S. Digital Response, a nonprofit that helps governments meet their technology needs.

鈥淪eeing maps powered by Esri technology out in the real world is always a pleasant surprise,鈥� Lisa says. 鈥淚 am incredibly proud to be part of a team that provides value in so many ways across environmental science, urban planning, healthcare and so many more sectors. It's rewarding knowing that the technology you work on makes a difference to so many people worldwide.鈥�

Making multiple round trips聽

The map of Lisa's life includes multiple stops at Carnegie Mellon. Her grandfather, Bruce Carter, taught at the College of Fine Arts from 1963 to 1993, and her father, Ben Carter, is a College of Fine Arts alum who has worked in the School of Drama since 1989. That family legacy guided her early choices.

"As someone that practically took my first steps on the Cut and grew up deeply influenced by the culture of imagination and creativity around me, I knew that 麻豆村 wasn鈥檛 only the best choice academically 鈥� at its core, it has always felt like home," she says. "Coming from a family where arts and science have always been deeply intertwined, 麻豆村 was where I could pursue both passions equally."

Since she was the daughter of a Carnegie Mellon employee, Lisa started her schooling with kindergarten at the Cyert Center for Early Education. After she graduated from North Hills High School in 2013, she returned to Carnegie Mellon to begin her college career.

But it wasn't until the second semester of her senior year, as she was completing a degree in cognitive psychology, that she discovered product design 鈥� in her mind, a perfect mix of art, science and technology.

After graduation she worked for a year and then returned to 麻豆村 to complete the one-year graduate program in human-computer interaction at the School of Computer Science. Karen Kornblum Berntsen, who taught interaction design at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, helped her learn to think like a designer.

"She taught me everything about design and how to look at things and notice when things aren't quite aligned or if something isn't quite the right typeface or font," Lisa says. "These are muscles I had never trained coming into that program with a psychology background, but that you need to have as a designer."聽

Laying down a road map聽

Well before she joined Esri in January, Lisa found that Pittsburgh was a great place to develop GIS, user experience and mapmaking skills, given the number of autonomous vehicle (AV) companies there. Early on, she worked for a consulting firm that had a project with a self-driving car company, and she was able to explore many of the challenges associated with it: machine learning, perception, computer vision and mapmaking.

Lisa found those challenges fascinating, and as she moved between roles at different companies 鈥� including short stints as a UX researcher at Google and as a UX designer at regional grocery chain Giant Eagle 鈥� she kept coming back to AVs and mapmaking at Pittsburgh companies like Motional and Aurora.

"AVs use a ton of maps. One of my very first projects was working on mapmaking and figuring out how to use things like AI to make the maps more efficient or to make the maps more intelligent," she recalls. "Having that mapmaking background made it the perfect fit to come to Esri and work on more mapmaking problems."

Now she's helping to democratize mapmaking. She hopes the future of mapmaking will be more accessible to everyone, even those without formal training in GIS or cartography.

"Personally, I would like to imagine a future where it becomes so easy that anybody can pick up their data and build a map with just what's off the top of their head," she says. "There are people without those levels of GIS training that still have things to say, that still have points they want to make, and I would love to open that world up to them, as well."聽