Nora Sherwood helped found Directions Magazine in 1998 and accepted an active editorial role in 2003, where she worked for almost 10 years. Many of you may remember her as the founding editor of Business Geographics magazine in 1992 and chairperson of the conference by the same name during the 1990s. Sherwood received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado and a Master of Science degree from the University of South Carolina, specialized in GIS. Previous to her involvement in publishing about GIS, she worked as a GIS management consultant at Ernst & Young, and also for a very early, bleeding-edge GIS software company called Criterion that was active in spatial crime analysis as well as other application areas.
Sherwood decided to move away from GIS about 10 years ago and reinvented herself as a science illustrator (norasherwood.com) after pursuing a certificate in Natural Science Illustration at the University of Washington, and now creates illustrations for U.S. Fish and Wildlife, numerous museums like the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the High Desert Museum and many other local government entities and private businesses.