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Ray Crew

Ray works at Chesterfield County as the Lead Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) for the Enterprise GIS Platform. This SRE role is new to Ray; prior to this, he served as Chesterfield County’s GIS Manager from 2018 to 2025. During his tenure, Ray oversaw a wide range of GIS work - from parcel editing to implementing cloud-hosted solutions and building enterprise-scale GIS platforms. In his current role as Lead SRE, he focuses on optimizing and maintaining these enterprise systems.

Before joining Chesterfield County, Ray worked in Golden, CO as a GIS Web Developer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Prior to that, he held various GIS roles with the U.S. Census Bureau International Office, USAID GeoCenter, U.S. Army Installation Command, U.S. Army Environmental Command, the University of Maryland, and Penn State University.

Ray holds a Bachelor of Science in Earth Science and a Master of Science in Soil Science, both from Penn State University. Ray has been involved with VAMLIS since 2018 as both a regular attendee and presenter.

Jacob Thornton, GISP

Jacob is the GIS Lead for Michael Baker International’s Richmond-based team. With over 20 years of experience in cartography, analysis, data management, and graphic design, Jacob serves as a project manager and leads GIS efforts as a consultant on transportation and urban planning projects across the country. Prior to his work at Michael Baker, Jacob held the position of GIS Coordinator at Vanderbilt University where he gave GIS instruction in classes and workshops, managed software and data, and created mapping products for the university and medical center. Jacob has also worked as an adjunct GIS professor at VCU and presented at VAMLIS and other conferences. He received his Bachelor of Science in Geographic Sciences from James Madison University (2004) and is a design-focused cartographer with experience using  ESRI ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, Experience Builder, Dashboards, and StoryMaps, as well as global positioning systems, and Adobe Creative Suite.

Having won Cartography and Data Integration awards at state-wide conferences in Tennessee and participated in the ESRI International User Conference Map Gallery, Jacob brought those experiences to VAMLIS with a goal of growing and improving the GeoCon Map Gallery. He has served as the Map and Poster Gallery coordinator for VAMLIS conferences for the last three years (2023-2025) and has served as Vice President for the last two years. Jacob lives in Richmond with his wife and two kids and enjoys playing drums and fishing in his free time.

John Watermolen

John has been in the GIS/Cartography industry for over 35 years. John has worked in federal, state, and local government during that time. John was the Nebraska State GIS Coordinator, who was responsible for all GIS infrastructure and activities within Nebraska’s state government. John is currently Orange County’s GIS Manager. John has presented at many conferences on a variety of cartography and GIS activities. John, while working with state government agencies in Nevada and Nebraska, earned Special Achievement awards from Esri. John has participated in several boards and panels, such as being a NSGIC board member and is currently a GISCORPS, core committee member.

John looks forward to helping VAMLIS grow and be even more successful with networking and sharing of GIS information in Virginia.

Brian Kingery, GISP, PMP

Brian is currently serving on the VAMLIS Executive Board as the Treasurer and looks forward to continuing serving in this role for the next term. Brian has served as VAMLIS Treasurer since 2019 in addition to being the Vice President position of the 2017 VAMLIS Executive Board.

Currently, Brian is a GIS Solutions Architect and Project Manager on Timmons Group’s Geospatial Services team providing expertise in GIS. He works with numerous clients in both the public and private sector. His project experience ranges from performing mission-critical GIS tasks while serving in the military here and abroad, to assisting organizations of all sizes solve business problems using GIS technology.

Brian has helped to plan, attend, and present at multiple regional outreach events and VAMLIS conferences over the years. He recognizes the value these events offer to the GIS community in Virginia regarding networking and learning from GIS professionals from all over the Commonwealth. Brian is excited about this continued opportunity and looking forward to furthering GIS in Virginia over the next few years and beyond.