Todd Slind ’92 is a Northwestern family man.  He has been sighted taxiing his children around Ballard on his bicycle/pedi-cab and loves sailing and snowboarding in his spare time. But when Todd discovered that a friend and colleague from Trinidad had been killed last fall in the Westgate Mall terrorist attack in Nairobi, he related, “I’d always identified myself as someone from the Northwest, a native and very rooted here, but I realize that I feel like a global community member since I got that news.”

Although he treasures his time at home and is an active member of his local community, Todd spends a lot of time traveling the world for SpatialDev, his geospatial analysis business. From Seattle to India, Todd has developed apps and programs that help governments, organizations and people.  At Evergreen, Todd says that he learned to be a self-directed social problem solver and how to focus on details while keeping the big picture in context.  In his work, he often uses and expands on these skills.  For example, a mobile app he helped develop provides information on local invasive species while one of his programs provides web mapping of continuously updated agricultural survey information on farmers in India.

During Todd’s recent trip to Burkina Faso, a west-central African country with a large rural population, he had another awakening.  With the mindset of a western man from a “developed” country, he was expecting to discover a depressed and impoverished population hungry for commercial development.  Instead, he found a largely rural population that appears to be satisfied with the sustenance they provide for themselves and the little luxuries gained from sales of their modest harvests.  He was also impressed by their adoption of International Women’s Day as a national holiday.  From his original skepticism, Todd has become a Burkina Faso fan.

Evergreen is well represented by this smart and flexible global-community Northwest native alumnus.