Sharon Kandris
Director, Community Informatics

Email: skandris@iupui.edu

Personal Profile:

Sharon Kandris, director of community informatics and senior GIS project manager, joined Polis in 1999 after working with the City of Concord, North Carolina Planning Department, where she supported the development and maintenance of the city’s GIS. With over ten years of experience with GIS applications, analysis, and consulting, she directs several large community information systems covering multiple disciplines. She is responsible for establishing the strategic direction for the center’s interest in community informatics, building partnerships, and applying spatial technologies to analysis of local, state, and national issues.

Kandris has consulted with nearly 20 cities across the nation on how to build a sustainable community information system and served on the executive committee of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a 29-city collaboration lead by the Urban Institute to further the development and use of neighborhood-level information systems in local policymaking and community building. She has partnered on several Urban Institute cross-site studies and routinely helps community-based organizations, not-for-profits, neighborhoods, government, educators, and researchers use local data to better understand their communities and improve their decision making. She earned a master’s degree in geography from University of North Carolina-Charlotte in 1998.