Jack Dangermond

Paul Jacob Dangermond (born July 23, 1945) bka Jack Dangermond is an American billionaire businessman and environmental scientist. He is the co-founder and president of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), a privately held geographic information systems (GIS) software company that he started with his wife Laura in 1969. As of April 2026, his net worth was estimated at US$13.4 billion. Dangermond, Esri's president, works at its headquarters in Redlands, California. He founded the company to perform land-use analysis; however, its focus evolved into GIS-software development, highlighted by the release of ARC/INFO in the early 1980s. The development and marketing of ARC/INFO positioned Esri with the dominant market share among GIS-software developers. Esri's flagship product, ArcGIS, traces its heritage to Dangermond's initial efforts in developing ARC/INFO. Dangermond is the founder of GIS Day: an annual, worldwide event taking place since 1999 to celebrate accomplishments and to promote the use of GIS and its technology.

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