Dave Grubman, MPS-GIS '12
MS Program Alumni Spotlight Fall 2025
Catch up with David Grubman
When David “Dave” Grubman graduated from the MS GIS program in 2012 (at the time known as MPS GIS) , he was one of Jack Ma’s first students to complete the program. Now serving as senior manager of Geospatial Insights at Choice Hotels International in Rockville, Md., Dave says he’s been feeling the pull to “give back” and sees connecting with current students as the perfect opportunity. He’s happy to share career advice and insights from his own journey in GIS.
What is a recent project that you have worked on that you have drawn on skills from the MS program?
It's been so long and technology has moved so quickly, that I'd say the "fundamentals" of GIS research have stuck with me. Learning how to profile datasets, visualize them, and draw insights. Data transformations.
How have the skills you learned in the MS program helped you progress in your career?
Keeping a growth mentality within GIS has been helpful to me. When I was there 10+ years ago, we were working with MS Silverlight (now defunct), ArcGIS 9.3 (still around somewhere?!), and some other pieces of tech that don't exist. Shapefiles are also a thing of the past now.
But the concepts remain and I use daily — understanding how to join data, spatial datatypes, and basic SQL. These are not going anywhere and so long as you can think through the problem, the coding language or tech stack doesn't matter.
Also, in the real-world, writing is a scarce and undervalued skill for technical contributors. The program, in my memory, forced us to explain what we were doing, how and why. Writing isn't going anywhere.
What drew you to the MS GIS program at Maryland?
I did my undergrad at UMD and it felt like a logical next step towards improvement.
What advice can you give current and prospective students about the MS program?
This is a great place to start a career in GIS, but don't forget to keep learning and growing.
What recommendations would you make to current students for career and academic success after graduation?
Learn Python. It's almost a requirement for every job in this space.
Be comfortable with working in cloud-computer environments. If you don't have experience, fire up an AWS account and play around. Don't be afraid of the command line.
Stay current on what's happening in the open-source geospatial space. Esri products are great, but that is not the end-all of GIS. Open-source geospatial file formats are the future. Point-and-click GIS is going extinct.
Learn data science skills. Geospatial has become a part of any data science workflow nowadays. Your work should plug into a greater data pipeline and if you cannot "productionize" your analysis or data pipeline, your work will almost become useless. Be comfortable cleaning MESSY data!
What are some of your hobbies and interests?
I have a family now so they take up most of my time. I still play somewhat-competitive rec soccer and that fills my weekend.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Thank you all.
Image courtesy of David Grubman
