Rich Leaver is a change agent for the land surveying, mapping and GIS industries. He has been involved in GIS as far back as 1988, speaking at the UW Madison extension course "Developing Geographic Mapping and Analysis Systems” over a period of 4 years. He has extensive experience in the private sector land surveying with 17 years, and has been the county surveyor and director of the surveying and mapping program at Dodge County for 22 years.

He is genuinely concerned with the losses experienced by the land surveying and mapping profession. He is an advocate for re-establishing the necessary authority once again in every state to create new and efficient land information systems statewide.

He believes that a paradigm shift is needed to accomplish such a task that will major in future efficiencies, rather than the archaic and totally inefficient land information systems of today.