Jason Bodewitz Joins Cesium as Chief of Staff

Cesium is in high growth mode; we’ve added 7 teammates in a bit over 2 months to our now 45-person team.  The metaverse and 3D geospatial have come into the limelight and we are growing to advance our core mission of empowering software developers to build experiences with 3D geospatial data.  We plan to hire as many as 20 more teammates in the next year.

While the growth is exciting, it also comes with scaling challenges - how do we keep our authentic culture that promotes creativity, innovation, and transparency, while also introducing the right structure and workflows to avoid slow n² scenarios.  Everyone who knows me knows that I am not big on process, but the need to introduce smart processes to fuel, not hinder, our growing team is self-evident.

As such, we are thrilled to welcome Jason Bodewitz to the team as Chief of Staff.  Jason is working closely with me and the team on cross-functional systems to support scale.

Jason earned an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA in Philosophy and English from Creighton University. After getting his MBA, he worked at UGI Corporation/AmeriGas across business development, corporate development, and strategic projects functions, rounding out his experience there on a multi-year, enterprise-wide transformation. He's also served as an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Air Force; worked as a strategic nuclear program analyst and contracts manager for the DoD; and founded a startup to provide low-cost, high-quality graduate admissions consulting.

He enjoys spending time with his family, baking, Muay Thai and boxing, reading, watching movies and television, and writing, most recently working on screenplays and children’s stories.

Patrick: You have a breadth of experience across large organizations, what attracted you to our smaller but growing team?

Jason: For me, while I’ve been able to sharpen my professional tools at large organizations, a team like Cesium’s is really where I’ve always wanted to get to–it was a matter of finding the right opportunity at the right time. I think Cesium’s culture and approach lends itself to forging really strong relations, which is something I highly value. As a philosophically-minded person who values lifelong learning, one of Cesium’s core values of “continuous learning” clearly resonates with me. And the company has had the sort of success and growth where there’s never a shortage of things to learn. And I haven’t even mentioned how amazing it is to be involved in the developing open metaverse landscape! Bottom line, what attracted me most to Cesium is a chance to be genuinely satisfied with and passionate about what I do every day.

Patrick: To support a growing organization like Cesium, we need to strike the right balance between structure and process to keep us organized without stifling innovation, creativity, and culture.  Can you share your unique philosophy to this calculus?

Jason: I don’t know how unique it is, but I think a lot of it boils down to having a mindset that’s genuinely collaborative and adaptable. I have some martial arts and boxing background like you, and contrary to what people often think of fighters, we’ve talked about the sort of humble mindsets that allow for fighters to grow and to help each other. For me at Cesium, it means me listening and taking the time to appreciate your and the team’s experiences, perspectives, and needs. It means as we scale, doing so in a way that respects, preserves, and promotes what is authentically Cesium and what has made Cesium successful. It means coming in with a set of skills that can help build the right processes, and not forcing frameworks like square pegs.