NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
NGA Mission 4

Letter from the Chief Technology Officer 5

NGA Mission Imperatives 6

Enabling Capabilities 12

NGA Core 14

Director Vice Adm. Robert D. Sharp Biography 16

Deputy Director Tonya P. Wilkerson Biography 17

GEOINT Symposium Schedule 18

NGA Booth Map 24

Collaborating with NGA 25

Contents
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We exist to “show the way.”

It is our time to lead — together, we can and will win!

Vice Adm. Robert D. Sharp

Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

NGA MISSION

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a unique combination 

of combat support agency and intelligence agency. We are the world leader 

in providing timely, relevant, accurate, and actionable geospatial intelligence 

(GEOINT). Anyone who fights wars, locates targets, sails a U.S. ship, flies a U.S. 

aircraft, makes national policy decisions, responds to natural disasters, or even 

navigates with a cellphone relies on NGA. 

Our agency, community and nation continue to face the challenges from our 

adversaries, the COVID-19 pandemic and more. To rise above these challenges, we 

need the GEOINT community’s help to meet our mission imperatives.

Mission Imperatives

1. Assured Positioning, Navigation, Timing, and Targeting

2. Accelerated Tasking Orchestration

3. Data Access and Data Integrity

4. Analytic Workflow Modernization

These mission imperatives are the specific and concrete functions and capabilities 

we know we must do and must do well to achieve our operational mission. This 

progress will be determined by the value we provide to others: the speed, accuracy, 

and precision with which we deliver actionable information to decision-makers and 

warfighters at every level.
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Letter from the 

Chief Technology Officer

We are in a GEOINT revolution. While our previous and current technologies, 

processes, and approaches delivered incredible, valuable results for our nation, 

they will not be sufficient for our future. As the NGA Director’s Intent states, “We 

will not sit back and observe this revolution from the sidelines; we will lead it.” 

To lead this revolution, we must fundamentally change how GEOINT workflows 

begin, which data types and sources are prioritized, and which domain is primary.

In delivering these changes, NGA has defined specific and concrete functions and 

capabilities required to deliver on our operational mission — we call these our 

mission imperatives. For most of this document, rather than focus on the future 

with purely a technology lens, we will focus on it with a mission lens, sharing our 

mission imperatives and the key initiatives within them. These mission imperatives 

are determining how we allocate our time, energy, people, and resources, so they 

are crucial to understanding where we are heading. 

Progress against these imperatives will not come easily, but we are committed to 

delivering on them. We know, however, that the only way we will make them a 

reality is as a team and with our partners, so we look forward to working with you 

to deliver on these together. 

Alex Loehr

Chief Technology Officer

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
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NGA Mission Imperatives 

We are at a historic inflection point for our agency, our community, and our nation. 

In addition to the hurdles we have faced from the COVID-19 pandemic, strategic 

competition has reemerged as a key challenge to U.S. prosperity and security. 

To meet these challenges and lead the GEOINT revolution, NGA is focused on 

delivering four mission imperatives and three enabling capabilities that cut across 

these mission imperatives.

1. Assured Positioning, Navigation, Timing, and Targeting

Assured Positioning, Navigation, Timing, and Targeting (APNT&T) is the mission 

imperative to reliably provide timely and accurate geospatial positioning, navigation, 

and timing information to support uninterrupted military and intelligence operations 

under all conditions. This information is critical to broad elements of the global 

economy and infrastructure, as all modern communication and navigation systems 

depend upon precise timing signals to operate. Navigation systems require precise 

location data to track where users are and provide the guidance they need to safely 

get to their desired locations. Delivering the right information at the right time and to 

the right place is essential to enable military forces to defend assets and support the 

ability to navigate, maneuver, and target adversary assets in the land, air, sea, and 

space domains.
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These basic functions that enable safety of navigation apply to civilian and military 

applications alike. In addition, military targeting applications depend on extremely 

precise positioning information to ensure accurate weapons performance. APNT&T 

begins with the collection and sharing of topographic, magnetic, and gravitational 

data that can be modeled to accurately depict the shape, features, and motion of 

Earth, cis-lunar, lunar, and deep space environments. Understanding and applying 

this information requires a workforce of highly trained scientists with extensive 

knowledge in physics, math, geography, and Earth sciences, as well as consistent 

data management and modern algorithm and software development practices. 

To deliver APNT&T, NGA is investing in:

Stabilizing, Modernizing, and Transforming Critical Geodetic Infrastructure: World 

Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) is the heart of GEOINT, and the systems that 

make up WGS 84 represent the foundation of GEOINT. The primary components of 

WGS 84 are the Terrestrial Reference Frame, Earth Gravitational Model, and World 

Magnetic Model. Efforts will focus on streamlining processes, eliminating legacy 

manual activities, enabling greater efficiency, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and 

machine learning (ML), and automating standards implementation. 

NGA enables GEOINT accuracy through geodetic, geophysical, and 

photogrammetric sciences and content. This includes measuring and modeling the 

Earth, describing the magnetic and gravitational fields, providing the WGS 84 

Reference Frame, establishing ground truth, collecting and analyzing GPS constellation 

data, and providing foundational materials for Target Coordinate Mensuration. 

Consistent and Accurate Operations in a GPS-Denied Environment: NGA needs 

new and novel approaches and technologies to ensure we can fight and win when 

an adversary denies us our GPS-capable battlespace. We must look back at how we 

operated before GPS and bring those strategies and techniques into the 21st century, 

while identifying minimum requirements for APNT&T under contested conditions. 

This includes hardening our delivery of the WGS 84 system, along with developing 

theater models built with higher fidelity, accuracy, and new phenomenologies 

exploitable by next-generation warfighters, weapons, and collections systems. We 

must also modernize our Safety of Navigation capabilities, including integrating 

alternative foundational data and techniques. 

Global Dynamic Modeling: NGA is moving to global dynamic modeling, using fully 

automated data normalization and event-driven workflows. This will enable us to 

deliver consistently accurate, high-resolution, continually updated representations 

of the Earth’s surface, terrain, and features, available on-demand. This includes 

instituting standards as well as developing advanced algorithms to generate and 

train models from a variety of data and sensors. Additionally, NGA will transform 

data management practices, moving from data that is owned, stored, managed, and 

accessed by individual users and applications to system-independent, enterprisemanaged data services accessible to all authorized users. 
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Precision GEOINT: NGA must automate precise imagery processes, including 

geopositioning data to derive precise points for targeting, to speed delivery of trusted 

GEOINT to decision-makers and warfighters at every level. This will enable crucial 

capabilities, such as georegistration for algorithms, exploitation tools, and analytic 

workflow automation. NGA needs to incorporate computer vision in precise imagery 

production to implement automated workflows and services for geopositioning. To 

do this, NGA needs data services that provide rapid and global imagery discovery, 

access, chipping, streaming, and processing — across all security domains.

2. Accelerated Tasking Orchestration

Accelerated Tasking Orchestration is the mission imperative to revolutionize GEOINT 

tasking, discovery, and acquisition using all available suppliers, platforms, sensors, 

sources, and services. To sustain GEOINT supremacy, ensure resiliency, and hold 

our adversaries at risk, NGA must synchronize available suppliers’ constellations 

and platforms into an integrated environment that achieves global persistence and 

minimizes the time from information need to direct delivery of GEOINT data to the 

end user. We must significantly reduce critical timelines to deliver the highest-quality 

geospatial data, information, and imagery to our customers.

NGA requires significant advancements within two critical capabilities to evolve, 

accelerate, and simplify GEOINT tasking orchestration: 

Automated Strategies: Automated Collection Strategies are indicator-driven, 

machine-enabled collection processes and mission strategies to automatically task 

collection capabilities. New tradecraft, technologies, and training are required to 

build, use, manage, and evolve collection strategies that dynamically task collection 

in response to mission indicators. These approaches must support secure, rapid data 

dissemination and, where possible, process directly to forward-based operational 

elements, enabling decision advantage and resilience.

NGA develops, maintains, and manages automated collection strategies that integrate 

multiple collection capabilities and data services, including commercial sources. The 

rapid growth in geospatial data and services is driving implementation of automation 

technologies. These technologies will significantly increase speed, coverage, and 

persistence in the GEOINT collection and production cycle. Specific technology focus 

areas for Automated Strategies are software and process automation, including:

• Automation mechanisms to integrate, design, and build automated tipping and 

cueing services across multiple domains and government and commercial providers. 

This includes sense-making and decision tools to automate collection strategies

• Modeling products and services to build, share, and rapidly execute mission 

models and algorithms
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• Process and procedure management capabilities to enable rapid 

documentation, process standardization, and performance tracking, reporting, 

and assessment mechanisms

• Multi-domain resilient technology ecosystems to enable strategies to securely 

traverse multiple security domains and operate across primary, alternate, 

contingency, and emergency communication plans

• Non-traditional tasking pathways to provide easy-to-use, sensor neutral, supplier 

management for tasking resilience in denied, disconnected, intermittent, and 

limited conditions. These pathways will ensure critical GEOINT reaches theater 

and tactical locations when needed regardless of communication status

Mission Needs and Collection Planning: NGA captures customer mission needs for 

the delivery of geospatial content. To meet these needs, NGA will deliver existing 

content if available or plan the acquisition of new remote sensing data or services, if 

required. To do this, NGA provides capabilities for rapidly capturing mission needs 

and planning, building, and orchestrating multi-supplier collection strategies that 

leverage the expanding set of suppliers for all GEOINT users. 

Emerging technologies are key to accelerating, searching and ordering content from 

across multiple supply chains with spatial and spectral diversity. It also matches that 

content to GEOINT customer needs. Technology focus areas for Mission Needs and 

Collection Planning are AI, software, interfaces, and databases for rapid remote 

sensing and geospatial data collection needs and planning, including:

• AI-Driven System Management for multi-option mission scenario planning, 

recommendations, and decision support

• Massive-Scale Graph Databases to store and reveal multi-faceted spatial data 

relationships and related data sets

• Automated Mission Planning Software and Services to conduct remote sensing 

simulations, forecasting, planning, and testing

• Analytic-Powered Collection Tracking and Reporting to anticipate geospatial 

needs based on customer interactions, patterns of behaviors, observations, and 

feedback loops

• Decision-Analysis Tools to gather, process, expose, and visualize data to help 

analysts determine highest-value collection strategies and supply selection
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3. Data Access and Data Integrity

Data Access and Data Integrity is the mission imperative to deliver trusted GEOINT 

data that is readily discoverable, accessible, and interoperable while preserving and 

protecting its integrity. This includes not only imagery, but all types of geospatial data, 

products, and services. The rapid globalization and commercialization of geospatial 

data and technology has vastly increased the variety of sources available for use by 

the GEOINT community and has also potentially increased opportunities for skilled 

adversaries to manipulate or compromise data and reduce our ability to provide 

crucial GEOINT in support of national security. 

Data integrity, or the reliability and trustworthiness of data throughout its lifecycle, 

coupled with data access, or the ability to acquire, store, and process the increasing 

diversity of available geospatial data, provides the foundation for all NGA’s mission 

imperatives. NGA will provide our customers the ability to find, get, and use 

GEOINT on all domains in a secure manner as they need it, whether in a web-based 

user interface or via application programming interface (API).

To maximize Data Access and Data Integrity, NGA is investing in:

• Secure Data Services: NGA must assure the reliability and trustworthiness of 

GEOINT data throughout its lifecycle. The speed and scale of NGA’s mission 

demand automated processes to detect and identify interference to GEOINT 

data in time to enact mitigations and restore trust. This includes validating the 

authenticity of data upon receipt, deep content inspection to identify potentially 

manipulated data, and ensuring integrity throughout the data lifecycle. NGA 

must consistently document its data sources to understand what it has and 

make the data available through easily accessible and documented APIs to 

enable data reuse across the organization and community. 

• Data Integration and Optimization: NGA maintains massive, geographically 

distributed data stores and must ensure data is readily available for the 

intended use when called upon. This requires standardized and structured 

approaches to GEOINT data processing, analysis, sharing, and storage. NGA 

will also develop a detailed understanding of how data is used and by whom 

to efficiently manage enterprise data holdings and provide transparency 

into data state changes. Modern, secure storage and compute capabilities, 

automated data tracking and monitoring, data virtualization, and robust yet 

flexible governance mechanisms are key to achieving effectiveness in this area.

• Cross-Domain Services: Underpinning the utility of the GEOINT data 

enterprise is the ability to move data across security enclaves at the speed 

and scale our mission requires. NGA will continue to expand our capability 

to safely transport substantial amounts of diverse data to wherever analysis 

and exploitation is occurring and deliver results to the environment of choice, 

without compromising security. Much of today’s competition is happening 
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in the unclassified domain, and based on future NGA missions, our ability to 

meaningfully conduct unclassified reporting will be crucial to deliver advantage 

before and during conflict. 

• Edge Services, Compute, and Transport: NGA will focus on GEOINT data 

delivery assurance to theater and tactical edge users and denied, disconnected, 

intermittent, and limited connectivity conditions. These edge services will provide 

the tools, data, services, and storage needed to execute GEOINT mission support 

where it is needed most and provide a resilient, global GEOINT architecture.

4. Analytic Workflow Modernization

Analytic Workflow Modernization is the mission imperative to accelerate GEOINT 

creation, exploitation, and analysis for decision advantage in our nation’s security. 

This will enable the GEOINT community to elevate its understanding of the world, 

anticipate future events, adapt faster, and integrate opportunities for innovation before 

our adversaries.

To modernize analytic workflows, NGA will automate significant portions of imagery 

exploitation and reporting workflows. This includes leveraging computer vision to 

rapidly exploit data, using advanced modeling techniques to understand, correlate, 

and predict activity, and integrating automation and modeling capabilities to prompt 

dynamic collection. To this end, NGA is investing in:

• Automated GEOINT Exploitation: NGA needs to integrate state-of-the-art 

computer vision and AI capabilities into analytic workflows to automatically detect, 

identify, characterize, extract, and attribute features and objects in imagery and 

video. This includes machine-assisted GEOINT exploitation, fully automated 

GEOINT exploitation, and exploitation of data from advanced sensors. Use cases 

for computer vision at NGA include monitoring known locations for known objects 

and activity, detecting objects and activity in areas not previously known, and 

identifying and characterizing specific objects in an image or video. 

• Automated Insight and Reporting: NGA must speed up the dissemination of 

GEOINT-derived information for timely situational awareness and insight to customers 

across the intelligence, defense, and first responder communities. To do this, NGA 

expects — and will enable with standards and best practices — that our capabilities 

will automatically generate textual reports derived from GEOINT observations.

• Modeling: NGA needs to institute modeling techniques that enable analysts to 

represent and analyze relationships between objects and activities to elevate 

their understanding and knowledge of intelligence issues and generate new 

insights. NGA will accomplish this by implementing knowledge models that we 

retain and enrich over time, using these to make inferences about adversary 

activity, test hypotheses, conduct exploratory analysis, and automate our GEOINT 
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collection. Our knowledge models will be built from data and enhanced by 

analysts’ knowledge in a discoverable and collaborative graph of observed and 

inferred objects, activities, and relationships. Modeling concepts NGA requires in 

knowledge models include object models, data models, and analytic models. 

° Object models represent objects — physical entities like equipment or 

facilities that exist in the world — by attributing and associating essential 

elements of information, such as what the object is, where it is located, and its 

affiliation. The attributes are based on observations of the object in an image, 

video, or other spatially referenced primary source of data.

° Data models represent data and the ways in which it is connected and 

interacts with automated processes, such as enabling and enhancing 

Automated Tasking Orchestration and tipping GEOINT collection.

° Analytic models represent the mathematical relationship between indicators 

to simulate, explain, or make predictions or inferences. These models will 

provide deterministic or probabilistic estimates of events and intelligence 

analysis outcomes, such as assessments of activities and their associated 

indicators and interrelationships.

Enabling Capabilities

During the process of developing mission imperatives, NGA identified a set of 

key enabling capabilities and baseline principles. These principles are integral 

and interwoven with the agency’s national security mission and all four mission 

imperatives. The principles are:

1. Workforce

NGA’s workforce will lead this revolution. Ingenuity, creativity, and innovation will 

underpin the fundamental changes we must achieve to address today’s most complex 

challenges and national security issues. The workforce will face unprecedented 

challenges in making sense of a tremendous volume and variety of data to provide a 

coherent story. Technology infrastructure, in line with industry and best practices for 

human capital processes and programs, is crucial to efficiencies and modernization. 

Employees must continuously learn and adapt as the human-machine interface 

evolves and new tradecraft emerges. NGA will leverage strategic workforce plans 

and skills assessments to identify critical data skills and competency gaps and 

provide upskilling and reskilling through focused training, educational opportunities, 

and experiential assignments. 

To enable the workforce to effectively operate with data and software platforms 

and tools, NGA will buy, reuse, and adapt training from industry, academia, and 

partners and create the unique, niche, and specialized training required. Recruitment 
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efforts will source talent from colleges and universities with candidates in GIS, STEM, 

cybersecurity, and other data-related programs. Motivating people to reach their 

highest level of performance requires having and sustaining a culture where all 

teammates feel they belong and are able to bring their whole authentic self to work 

each day. 

2. Functional Management

These Tech Focus Areas are a key enabler to achieving the 2035 CONOPS End State 

of an Integrated GEOINT Operating Environment that is part of a data-centric, multidomain ecosystem. Functional Management will play a critical role in the form of 

promulgating standards, ensuring compliance with those standards, and leveraging 

GEOINT resources for the greatest effect. The GEOINT Functional Manager will 

leverage governance fora and existing authorities to drive the community towards 

this mutually defined end state.

3. Technology

We must deliver hardware and software faster, more securely, and more consistently 

to meet the technical demands of the mission imperatives. Within this enabling 

capability, NGA is focused on:

Cloud Access and Usage: Cloud services are essential for NGA. NGA has been 

and must continue to be a leader in delivering content from hyperscale cloud 

environments to the tactical edge. This commitment made a major impact on the 

workforce’s ability to telework during the pandemic and will continue as NGA plans 

for its new campus in St. Louis, N2W, moving workstations away from thick clients 

and to a virtualized environment. NGA’s compute architecture consists of multiple tiers:

° We leverage commercial cloud to ingest, manage, and share massive 

volumes of data every day

° We have two core, geographically distributed data centers

° We globally provide compute and data forward in support of our customers

° We have edge devices forward deployed in theater to push data and 

software to the tactical edge, such as Navy carriers at sea, cockpits, and 

unclassified mobile phones during disaster response

Delivering capabilities across these environments enables NGA to get GEOINT 

products and services to our customers when and where they need them. Across this 

architecture, we will deliver GEOINT data for use in advanced analysis and as the 

foundation for AI and ML to enhance analytic missions.
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NGA’s Common Operations Release Environment (NGA CORE): At NGA, we will 

provide the best available tools to every team building and operating software. 

Those tools must communicate with one another as part of a common, reliable, and 

efficient tool set, and NGA is investing in this once, rather than expecting every 

program to build and maintain its own environment. We will accomplish this through 

metrics and elements defined in The NGA Software Way and through capabilities 

that are part of NGA CORE, including:

° DevSecOps: Where we develop, review, document, and test code

° Platform as a Service: Where we deploy and run code and containers 

° API Management: Where we document and discover available data 

and services

° Developer Experience: How we grow NGA’s software tradecraft 

° Continuous Monitoring: Where we get real-time metrics, monitoring, 

and alerting

° Workflow Orchestration: Where we enable modern GEOINT workflows

° Messaging: Where we publish and consume NGA data streams

NGA CORE is part of NGA’s architectural pivot from focusing on individual systems 

to enterprise services and must continue to evolve and grow as a shared environment 

and the fastest way to deliver software at NGA. 
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Automation: NGA will relentlessly automate business and operational processes. 

NGA requires automation technology to support this transformation and will perform 

a systematic evaluation of business and operations workflows to maximize this 

transition from manual to automated. 

We will automate testing, deployment, and monitoring across all products on all 

domains. NGA will continue to invest in DevSecOps tooling and processes and 

expand this to include DataOps and MLOps, bringing these principles of faster 

iterations, collaboration, and automation into how we manage our data and use 

ML models.

Finally, leveraging AIOps across NGA’s IT infrastructure will enable faster response 

times with a decreased risk to mission disruption. Historically, there has been a 

correlation between speed and risk — when one increases, so does the other. 

Automation has changed this formula, and we must integrate this approach 

across NGA’s infrastructure and processes to increase delivery speed across the 

organization in a scalable and consistent manner with fewer mistakes and lower risk. 
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Vice Adm. 

Robert D Sharp

DIRECTOR, NGA

Vice Adm. Robert Sharp is the seventh 

Director of the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency (NGA). Vice Adm. Sharp 

leads and directs NGA under the authorities 

of the Secretary of Defense and Director of 

National Intelligence. He became NGA’s 

director on February 7, 2019.

From April 2016 to February 2019, Vice 

Adm. Sharp served as Commander, Office of Naval Intelligence and Director, 

National Maritime Intelligence-Integration Office. During his initial flag assignment 

he served as the Director for Intelligence (J2), U.S. Special Operations Command.

 His previous operational tours include deployments with USS Ranger (CV61), 

Carrier Air Wing 2 embarked on USS Constellation (CV 64), and Carrier Group 2 

embarked on USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). Additionally, he conducted multiple 

deployments to Afghanistan as J2 of a Special Operations Task Force, leading joint, 

inter-agency intelligence professionals supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Vice Adm. Sharp’s shore tours include assistant intelligence officer for Commander 

Naval Air Forces, Pacific; instructor duty at the Fleet Intelligence Center, Pacific; 

targeting officer on the Joint Staff; Intelligence Operations officer with U.S. Fleet 

Forces Command; Director of Intelligence for Naval Special Warfare Development 

Group; Director of Intelligence and Deputy Director for the Maritime Operations 

Center for Commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet; 

and senior fellow on the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group. He 

commanded the Joint Intelligence Center, U.S. Central Command from August 2010 

to August 2012.

A native of San Jose, California, Vice Adm. Sharp graduated from the University of 

the Pacific with a Bachelor of Arts in English and was commissioned through Officer 

Candidate School in 1988. He holds a Naval War College diploma and earned a 

Master of Science in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the 

Armed Forces in 2008.

In addition to multiple personal, unit, and campaign awards, he has been the 

recipient of the Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor award for excellence in instruction, the 

U.S. Army’s Knowlton Award for Military Intelligence, the Rear Admiral Edwin 

T. Layton leadership award, and the Naval Intelligence Foundation award for 

excellence in operational intelligence support to the Fleet.
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Tonya P Wilkerson

DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NGA

Tonya P. Wilkerson serves as the ninth Deputy 

Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence 

Agency. She was sworn in Dec. 2, 2021. Ms. 

Wilkerson brings a wealth of knowledge and 

over three decades of experience across the 

Intelligence Community, including leadership 

skills, experience across multiple mission areas, 

and deep expertise in the space sector.

From February to November 2021, Ms. 

Wilkerson served as the Associate Deputy 

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Science and Technology/Strategy. 

She also held many prominent positions within the National Reconnaissance Office 

spanning a range of activities, including research and development, acquisitions, 

and operations. Ms. Wilkerson served as a change management leader within the 

NRO during a time of significant and complex structural transition.

Ms. Wilkerson held simultaneous leadership roles in the NRO and CIA’s Directorate 

of Science & Technology. She successfully leveraged her technical skills, combined 

with her background in space operations, to enhance technical capabilities within 

the DS&T.

Ms. Wilkerson holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia 

Polytechnic Institute and State University and a master’s degree in engineering 

management from George Washington University.
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GEOINT FOREWORD | MAIN STAGE

SUNDAY, April 24

1:30 — 2:15 p.m. Intelligence Integration in Colorado

 Sandra Auchter, Director, NGA Denver

2:15 — 3 p.m. Keynote 

 Tonya Wilkerson, Deputy Director, NGA 

2022 GEOINT SYMPOSIUM AGENDA

NGA ACTIVITIES

*All times are Mountain Time

GEOINT SYMPOSIUM | MAIN STAGE

Monday, April 25

10:30 — 11:15 a.m. A High Resolution GEOINT Community: Taking Action to

 Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

 Tonya Wilkerson, Deputy Director, NGA

11:45 — 12:30 p.m. Keynote

 Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, USN, Director, NGA

NGA BOOTH 311 – MONDAY, APRIL 25

Demos Industry Engagement

Immersive Virtual 

Constructive GEOINT 

10 – 11 a.m.

 4 – 5 p.m.

Analytic Workflow Modernization

Claire Hanna and Sean Hannan, Analysis

10 – 11:30 a.m.

Lightning Talk, NGA 

Moonshot Labs

Christine Woodard, DDI

12 – 1 p.m.

NGA’s Tech Focus Areas

Sarah Campbell, Research

12 – 1 p.m.

CSM Thomas Baird, NGA Senior Enlisted Advisor

Common Core Training for Joint Service Members

1 – 2 p.m.

Lightning Talk, SPECTRE 

Jacob McCord, Research, NGA

2 – 3 p.m.

NGA’s Tech Focus Areas

Rob Shields, Analysis

2 – 3 p.m.

CRADAs/EPAs

David Grover, Research

3:30 – 5 p.m.

NGA Recruiters: Monday, 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. – 4 p.m. 

NGA Small Business: Monday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., 12:30 – 2:30 p.m., and 3 – 5 p.m. 
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GOVERNMENT HUB

MONDAY, APRIL 25

2 — 2:30 p.m. Keynote

 Frank Avila, Deputy Director, Commercial and 

Business Operations, Source, NGA

2:45 — 3:30 p.m. NGA’s Foundation GEOINT

 Stacie Bauer, Deputy Director, Foundation GEOINT 

Integrated Program Office, CIO-T, NGA

 Jay Belles, Director, Future Capabilities and 

Readiness Office, GEOINT Enterprise, NGA

 Dr. Kevin Dobbs, Foundation Pod Lead, Research, NGA

 Dr. J.N. Markiel, Senior GEOINT Authority 

for Geomatics, Source, NGA

YPG HUB

1:45 — 2:30 p.m. Community Climate Impact and the Future of Work

 Sue Pollmann, West Executive, NGA

3:15 — 4 p.m. The Role of User Experience in GEOINT

 Michelle Brennan, Image and Video 

Pod Lead, Research, NGA 

INNOVATION HUB

1:10 — 1:15 p.m. SPECTRE: Designing AI for GEOINT Data

 Jacob McCord, Research, NGA

1:50 — 1:55 p.m. Location Inferencing of Social Media Messages

 Dr. Monica Lipscomb, R&D Scientist, NGA

WORKING GROUPS

12:30 — 1:15 p.m. Tradecraft and Professional Development Working 

Group Meeting

 Celia Hopkins, Deputy Associate Director for Capabilities

 Jo-Ellen Adkins, Deputy Director, HD

4:15 — 5 p.m. Commercial GEOINT Working Group Meeting

 Riley Jay, Deputy Director, Discovery and Assessment Office, 

Source Commercial and Business Operations, NGA
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GOVERNMENT HUB

TUESDAY, APRIL 26

1:30 — 2:15 p.m. NGA’s Technology Focus Areas Update

 Moderator: Alex Loehr, Chief Technology Officer, NGA

 Sarah Campbell, Director of Strategic Partnerships 

and Communications, Research, NGA

 Chris Parrett, GEOINT Mission Manager for Targeting 

and Military Issues, Mission Management, NGA 

 Rob Shields, Director, Office of Analytic 

Technology, Analysis, NGA

 Cathleen Williamson, Technical Executive, Source, NGA

2:30 — 3:15 p.m. Modernizing GEOINT Standards

 Ashley Suiter, Data Analyst, Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

YPG HUB

1 — 1:45 p.m. DivergINT: Advantages of Diverse Perspectives to the 

GEOINT Tradecraft

 Jessie Bleile, Visiting Professor, Harris Stowe State University, NGA

NGA BOOTH 311 – TUESDAY, APRIL 26

Demos Industry Engagement

Immersive Virtual 

Constructive GEOINT 

10 – 11 a.m.

 4 – 5 p.m.

Meet & Greet with NGA Deputy Director Tonya Wilkerson

10 – 11 a.m.

Lightning Talk, SPECTRE

Jacob McCord, Research

12 – 1 p.m.

Industry Engagement

Tim Clayton and Rick Myllenbeck, Component Acquisition

11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Lightning Talk, RONIN 

David McHale, CIO-T

2 – 3 p.m.

Analytic Workflow Modernization

Claire Hanna and Sean Hannan, Analysis

1 – 2:30 p.m.

NGA's Tech Focus Areas

Rob Shields, Analysis 

3 – 4 p.m.

NGA's Tech Focus Areas

Cathleen Williamson, Source

4 – 5 p.m.

NGA Recruiters: Tuesday, 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 – 4 p.m.

NGA Small Business: Tuesday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., 12:30 – 2:30 p.m., and 3 – 5 p.m. 
212022 GEOINT Symposium

1:45 — 2:30 p.m. Career Transformation Post-Pandemic

 Jo-Ellen Adkins, Deputy Director, HD, NGA

3:30 — 4:15 p.m. What is the Metaverse Anyway?

 Chris Parrett, GEOINT Mission Manager for Targeting 

and Military Issues, Mission Management, NGA

INNOVATION HUB

1:10 — 1:15 p.m. NGA’s Moonshot Labs: Advancing Mission through 

Collaboration and Engagement

 Christine Woodard, NGA St. Louis Ecosystem 

Engagement Lead, Lead for Moonshot Labs 

Initiatives, Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

2:30 — 2:35 p.m. Joint Regional Edge Node (JREN)

 Chuck Bellinger, Project Manager, CIO-T, NGA

3:50 — 3:55 p.m. Ronin: AI/ML Imagery Change Detection for 

Everyday Analysis

 David McHale, Product Manager, CIO-T, NGA

WORKING GROUPS

4:15 — 5 p.m. Small Business Advisory Working Group Meeting

 Cindy Liu, GEOINT Artificial Intelligence Governance 

Lead Data and Digital Innovation Directorate, NGA

 Mark Munsell, Deputy Director, Data and 

Digital Innovation Directorate, NGA

 Nick Olijnyk, Senior Data Officer, Data and AI Operations, 

Data and Digital Innovation Directorate, NGA

 Dale Rainey, Director, Office of Small 

Business Programs, NGA
22NGA Tech Focus Areas

NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

GOVERNMENT HUB

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

12:45 — 1:15 p.m. NGA’s Computer Vision Quest

 Moderator: Mark Munsell, Deputy Director, 

Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

 Tony Bland, Engineering Lead, Maven Integration, 

Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

 Cindy Liu, GEOINT Artificial Intelligence Governance 

Lead, Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

 Nick Olijnyk, Senior Data Officer, Data and AI 

Operations, Data and Digital Innovation, NGA

 Rob Shields, Director, Office of Analytic 

Technology, Analysis, NGA

1:15 — 2 p.m. NGA’s Integrated Acquisition Strategy

 Tonya Crawford, Deputy Chief Information Officer, NGA

 Gary Dunow, Associate Director for Enterprise, NGA

 Celia Hopkins, Deputy Associate 

Director for Capabilities, NGA

 Howard Pierce, Chief, Information, Technology and 

Mission Support, Office of Contract Services, NGA

 Sue Pollmann, West Executive, NGA

NGA BOOTH 311 – WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27

Demo Industry Engagement

Immersive Virtual 

Constructive GEOINT

10 – 11 a.m.

Commercial GEOINT

Frank Avila, Source

10:30 – 12 p.m.

Lightning Talk, RONIN

David McHale, CIO-T

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

NGA's Tech Focus Areas 

Alex Loehr, CTO

12 – 1 p.m.

Lightning Talk, NGA 

Moonshot Labs 

Christine Woodard, DDI

1 – 2 p.m.

CRADAs/EPAs

David Grover, Research

1:30 – 3 p.m.

NGA Recruiters: Wednesday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., 1– 2 p.m.

NGA Small Business: Wednesday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., 12:30 – 3 p.m. 
232022 GEOINT Symposium

YPG HUB

12:30 — 1:15 p.m. Entrepreneurship & The Unlikely COVID Era Start-up Boom

 Nicole Washington, Senior Associate for 

Entrepreneurship, Research, NGA

1:15 — 2 p.m. Personalization at Scale: Moving from Creating Products to 

Providing Self-service GEOINT Business Models

 Cathleen Williamson, Technical Executive, Source, NGA

INNOVATION HUB

1:10 — 1:15 p.m. NSG Campaign Plan: The Campaign to Drive 

GEOINT Towards the Future

 Cristine Salo Thompson, Partner Engagement, NGA

WORKING GROUPS

12:30 — 1:15 p.m. Modeling, Simulation and Gaming Working Group Meeting

 Randi Clapham, Operations Manager and Product Owner for 

Foundation GEOINT 3-Dimension Directive, Source, NGA

 Chris Parrett, GEOINT Mission Manager for Targeting 

and Military Issues, Mission Management, NGA
135 1635

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 USGIF Young

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2215

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109

Satellogic

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 Geosite,

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1105

 Orbital

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430

Virtru

1207

Aviatrix

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637

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Sonatype

1504

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326

Saildrone

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3GIMBALS

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1935

USGIF

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IBM

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1511

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1823

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513

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1812

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1913

Ansys

323

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1901

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MDA

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523

Esri 423

ManTech

834

TerraGo

504

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1535

NetApp

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922

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1211

 Dell

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1036

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611

Peraton

2123

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127

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C4ISRNET

1401

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1337

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506

Guidehouse

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801

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735

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Janes

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 Air Force

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1612

ServiceNow

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434

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307

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1611

MapLarge

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723

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Freedom

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207

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Cohesity

924

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2106

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2030

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1734

e-GEOS

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2228

 CAE USA

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1414

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1103

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percipient.ai

302

 CRREL Remote

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1923

 Amazon

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1629

 Dynamic

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704

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407

Elastic

829

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 Atomics

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1906

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303

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1531

PTFS

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2107

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428

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335

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Infoblox

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2227

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1201

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528

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1523

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711

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923

Airbus

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UiPath

507

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1407

 Thales

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806

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Ntrepid

1432

Forcepoint

1701

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1423

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1909

CloudBees

1507

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1505

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835

Rendered.ai

2326

iMerit

1931

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603

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1405

Alteryx

1327

Parsons

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MarkLogic

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BigBear.ai

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934

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534

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1305

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435

UNSEENLABS

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1634

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geoConvergence

1501

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1608

Matterport

1606

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1602

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1436

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1735

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1539

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2134

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1802

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2212

SkyFi

2105

Chooch.AI

24NGA Tech Focus Areas

NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

NGA BOOTH 311 MAP
252022 GEOINT Symposium

Collaborating with NGA

There are a few initial steps educational institutions, not-for-profits, and businesses, 

large and small, must take to do business with the federal government:

1. Register in the System for Award Management (SAM): SAM is a consolidated 

portal used across the U.S. government to conduct acquisition and financial 

assistance processes and share information on the latest solicitations. SAM 

is unclassified.

For additional information, visit https://sam.gov.

2. Register in the Acquisition Resource Center (ARC): ARC is a website for 

members of the U.S. intelligence community (IC) to exchange information 

with industry on business opportunities and conduct source selection activities. 

ARC is both unclassified and classified.

For additional information, visit https://acq.westfields.net.

3. Register with Grants.gov: Grants.gov operates under the governance of the 

Office of Management and Budget to provide a centralized location for grant 

seekers to find and apply for federal funding opportunities. Grants.gov 

is unclassified.

For additional information, visit https://grants.gov.

4. Leverage cross-government collaborations Resources such as the General 

Services Administration (GSA) provide a wealth of information on how to work 

with NGA.

For additional information, visit https://gsa.gov.

5. Explore opportunities: NGA uses Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), 

the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplemental (DFARS), and 

non-FAR-based agreements for collaborating with non-government entities. 

Through SAM, Grants.gov, and ARC, you can stay on top of opportunities to 

work with NGA. Thoughtful responses to FAR-based solicitations, such as broad 

agency announcement (BAA) requests, requests for information (RFIs), and 

requests for proposals (RFPs), help us understand your capabilities and make 

more informed decisions on our acquisitions.

NGA Collaboration Tools

 Broad Agency Announcements. BAAs solicit innovative ideas on basic and 

applied research. BAAs are normally posted on SAM, Grants.gov, and/or 

ARC. NGA’s primary BAA is the Boosting Innovative GEOINT Research BAA 

(BIG-R BAA).

For additional information, contact BigRBAA@nga.mil.
26NGA Tech Focus Areas

NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

 NGA Bailments. NGA uses bailments to create a no-cost agreement 

between NGA and a commercial vendor to test, evaluate, and analyze 

a product or service. A bailment is appropriate for mature products and 

services with an identified mission requirement and mission user.

For additional information, contact SC_Industry_Engagement@nga.mil.

 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). A CRADA 

is a low-risk, flexible opportunity to collaborate on a research and 

development (R&D) project. Although CRADAs do not come with funding, 

agreement members can share resources (personnel, facilities, equipment, 

data, etc.)

For additional information, contact CRADA@nga.mil.

 Education Partnership Agreements (EPAs). NGA uses EPAs to develop 

joint education projects and curriculum that support and enhance STEM 

education objectives. Although an EPA has no direct funding, partners can 

share resources (personnel, equipment, facilities, etc.). 

For additional information, contact EPA@nga.mil.

 In-Q-Tel (IQT) Investments. As a non-profit 501c(3) corporation, IQT helps 

the IC and DoD invest in early-stage technology companies. Using NGA 

problem sets, IQT works on NGA’s behalf with companies via specific, 

one-to-three-year work programs.

For additional information, contact ngaqicall@nga.mil.

 Partnership Intermediary Agreements (PIA). NGA uses PIAs to engage 

with non-traditional organizations, companies and small businesses in 

order to transfer unclassified technology, drive the geospatial market, and 

conduct pre-acquisition discovery support.

For more information, contact nga_research@nga.mil.

 Other Transactions (OTs). An OT agreement is a flexible acquisition tool for 

prototype projects that enhance the mission effectiveness of the DoD. 

A competitively awarded prototype OT can include an option for a 

noncompetitive follow-on production OT to be awarded after successful 

completion of the prototype.

For more information, contact OT@nga.mil.

 Prize Competitions. Competitions provide an opportunity to crowdsource 

NGA’s most difficult problems by leveraging the public for innovative 

solutions. For a sample of past NGA challenges, visit www.challenge.gov

and search “NGA.”

For more information, contact prize_competition@nga.mil.
272022 GEOINT Symposium

 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR). NGA uses DoD’s SBIR 

program to fund early-stage research and development at small technology 

companies for projects serving a DoD need and with commercial and 

military market potential.

For more information, contact SBIR@nga.mil.

 Tearline. Tearline is an example of a real-world analytic outreach effort 

where NGA collaborates with non-profits to create content of mutual 

benefit. It functions like an online journal hosting quality GEOINT in a 

brand designed for mobile-friendly interaction.

For additional information, contact tearline@nga.mil.

Contact Us

We have offices that can help with specific opportunities to work with NGA. 

For more information, reach out to any of the following:

 Small Business Program Office. You must complete a SAM Small Business 

Profile for Dynamic Small Business Search (DSBS) at https://web.sba.gov/

pro-net/search/dsp_dsbs.cfm before reaching out to NGA. For specific 

assistance on an existing contract, contact smallbusiness@nga.mil.

 NGA Industry Engagement. To talk with us or ask us anything, to 

discuss your solutions and provide a capabilities demo, contact 

IndustryEngagement@nga.mil.

 NGA Research. For GEOINT research opportunities, contact 

nga_research@nga.mil.

 NGA Academic Engagement. For inquiries on research grants and possible 

EPAs, contact academia@nga.mil.
Approved for Public Release, 22-427