Chris North: Helping Professionals Reframe the Way They Think

At a high school party, Chris North was already that kid—the one who could stare at a map and get lost in the story of a place. “Long before we were talking about story maps, I would look at a map and my brain was telling me a story of what it'd be like to visit that place,” he said.

Today, that same curiosity fuels a career that’s influenced an entire generation of geospatial professionals. But if you ask him what he really does, Chris won’t talk about maps. He’ll talk about therapy.

“GIS therapy,” he explained with a laugh, “is about helping people stop focusing on tools and start thinking about the ‘who’ and the ‘why.’” In other words, Chris North doesn’t just help organizations use Geographic Information Systems—he helps them understand why geography matters in the first place.

Chris describes GIS not just as technology, but as a way to see the world more clearly.

“Every existential threat that society faces right now—climate change, geopolitical issues—has to do with geography,” he said. “If there’s a system that allows you to quantify and communicate that, why wouldn’t you want it?”

That perspective has carried him through three decades of work, including 22 years at Esri Canada. It also led to moments of profound inspiration—like the first time he saw ArcGIS dashboards and realized it was the very vision he’d hand-sketched as a student 25 years earlier. “It was like—there it is,” he recalled. “That’s the vision I had.”

But Chris’s greatest impact often came not from code or strategy, but from reframing problems. In one workshop with a regional planning team, people were stuck debating security protocols and data limitations. Chris stood up and started sketching on the whiteboard—stick figures, arrows, blue people, purple people. By the end, the group had built what’s now a globally recognized real-time data-sharing model.

“It was magical,” said the host. “We were struggling, and you taught us to see the problem differently."

That ability to simplify, to teach, to connect—those are the threads that tie Chris’s journey together. As he moves into a new chapter with his consulting firm, 43 North GIS, he’s focused on helping others rediscover their “why.” It’s not about choosing the right software. It’s about understanding what you’re really trying to do—and why it matters.

“We don’t ask why enough,” he said. “Ask it three times, and by the third, you’ll get the real reason. That’s how you create lasting change.”

Chris North’s story is a reminder that passion doesn’t always start with a business plan—it can start with a map, a teacher, or a moment when the world suddenly makes sense. And sometimes, progress looks like a conversation on a couch, not a server migration.