As Bronwyn Morgan prepared for her first takeoff, she recalls being frightened to death of losing her aircraft — even as she was watching from below, safely on the ground.
“I did not want this thing to get away from me. You lose a drone, and you just pray it comes back to you,” Morgan said. “But I found it very liberating. It was my chance to fly, but I didn’t have to be in the sky to do it.”
While Morgan considers herself first and foremost an innovator, she’s also a geospatial entrepreneur. She founded XEO Air in 2017, a company that collects data for other businesses using drones. She keeps it simple in her definition of geospatial technology: “It’s all just about the place and space that something exists.”
“This is new. The whole idea of aerial data use for industries that really hadn’t even thought about it. Mixing this geospatial data in with business intelligence and now artificial intelligence becomes a game changer. I think that geospatial is the future,” Morgan said.
As for XEO Air’s future, Morgan aims to take on a very strong presence in the market as a leader in geospatial data in the next few years. She is situated well to achieve that goal, as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency builds its new west headquarters just north of downtown St. Louis and expects to be fully operational by 2025.
In the years since XEO Air’s founding, Morgan has in fact continued to build up her company’s presence and impact on the St. Louis geospatial community. This summer she launched the Airversity Drone Academy Center of Excellence, a 40-acre space for professional drone pilots to complete flight training, prepare for their FAA exam, take geospatial science classes and more.
Morgan plans on opening other locations throughout the country beginning in 2022.
She also was awarded a $20,000 grant from T-Rex’s GeoSeed Grant Program, which targets research partnerships between local universities and companies. With the money, Morgan will create a mixed-reality interface that helps streamline the process of bridge inspections through collaborating with University of Missouri Science and Technology.
While XEO Air was born in Atlanta, the Metro East native moved back to the area to be closer to family. It was then that she discovered the region’s blooming geospatial environment.
Morgan’s experience as a returning St. Louisan leads her to believe that there’s room for many more companies and job opportunities in the geospatial scene in St. Louis.
“Attending Dunbar Elementary School in East St. Louis, and then being gone for so long and working around the world and then coming back now to this area, I’m seeing a lot of growth, new opportunity. I see a city that is looking to heal, as well as grow in a new direction, and I think geospatial is a great space to do it.”
Morgan also sees the opportunities in the geospatial industry as a way to address some of the societal inequities that have come to national attention thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement.
“For me, it was never about just creating a drone company, it was really about an aerial revolution. And geospatial and the data is the biggest part of it. And this is what we’ve got to look for, these kinds of outlets to solve some of these social problems that we also have. This is doable.”
As a Black woman, Morgan knows what it’s like to work in a professional space where very few, if any, people who look like her.
“But it also is a bit daunting at times because you wonder if people take you seriously. You have to often demonstrate your credentials and quote your resume more than others — but that’s been my whole career. I didn’t just start yesterday. I believe in being a trailblazer.”
She embraces Black women already working in the industry and hopes to be an inspiration for girls and boys who want to pursue a geospatial-related career. She emphasizes the importance of getting youth involved and making sure they have access to the educational programs they need to attain those goals.
“We want to encourage and train more young drone pilots, more young folks in geospatial, artificial intelligence, 5G, all the things that I touch and soon urban air mobility and get them engaged so that they recognize if I can do this, you can do this. I want to hopefully be an inspiration to others.”
Hear more of Bronwyn Morgan’s story on theSTL.com and catch her podcast conversations with other St. Louis drone tech, geospatial and AI innovators at XeoCast on Spotify.
Greater St. Louis, Inc. brings together the business community in the 15-county, bi-state St. Louis metropolitan area with a unified voice, a bold agenda, and as one metro, anchored by a vibrant urban core, to help drive economic growth and create opportunities for all with a focus on inclusive growth.
