Nick Lewis, Major (Retired), Infantry/FA-40 (Space Operations)
Nick Lewis is a geospatial intelligence professional and former Army officer with a career that has moved from ground combat operations to space systems to the commercial satellite industry. He graduated from West Point in 2008 with a degree in Geographic Information Science and earned a Master of Arts in Geography from the University of Colorado focused on developing algorithms for detecting sea ice using satellite missile warning data.
Nick deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 with the 101st Airborne Division as a company Executive Officer and Reconnaissance Platoon Leader. In 2015, he deployed to Kuwait with Army Space, leading a strategic space control team at the theater level. That assignment launched him into the growing operational role of space capabilities and pointed him toward a career in the commercial Earth observation industry. He first led a software engineering team that automated the detection of high-priority objects of interest in spy-satellite imagery for the Intelligence Community before moving into the commercial space sector. He currently leads Solutions Engineering at BlackSky, a space-based intelligence company, working with U.S. and international government customers leveraging satellite imagery and AI to answer complex problems.
What skills from GEO do you continue to use in your professional work today?
The biggest thing GEO gave me was a way of seeing problems. Thinking spatially has equipped me for every job I’ve held. I love seeing the relationships that geography forges. It shapes how I understand problems, how I explain our capabilities to customers, and how I make sense of complex situations.
What I didn’t fully appreciate as a cadet was how wide the discipline actually is. Geography runs from hard science to the humanities and covers a lot of ground in between. You’re applying algorithms to processing satellite imagery one week and studying human migration, cultural formation, or the politics of borders the next. That range pushes you to use different parts of your brain and builds a kind of intellectual flexibility that’s hard to get from a more narrowly focused major. It helps to develop thinkers who can bridge gaps! Most disciplines train you to analyze things in isolation. Geography trains you to see how things relate to each other across space, terrain, infrastructure, and human patterns. That instinct has carried over into every role I’ve had since West Point.
Advice for a Plebe considering a major in Geospatial Science
Pick the major that challenges how you think, not just what you know. Geography does that. One week you’re processing LiDAR data; the next you’re analyzing how population density shapes an insurgency or how river systems constrain logistics. That range builds real mental flexibility.
I’ve used spatial thinking in Afghanistan, in Kuwait, and across a decade in the commercial space industry. Geography is one of the things we can’t escape. If you learn to think spatially, that perspective goes with you everywhere.