I’m thrilled to recommend Nate Bender for his outstanding work analyzing and synthesizing our 2024 Athlete Alliance engagement data. Nate brought a rare combination of deep athlete perspective and analytical precision to this project—allowing us to better understand the impact of our athlete community in the climate movement.

Nate’s work helped highlight where our Athlete Alliance is thriving, where gaps exist, and how we can refine our strategies moving forward.

Beyond his technical expertise, Nate approached the project with professionalism, efficiency, and a keen eye for detail. He worked seamlessly with our team, ensuring that the final dataset was both accurate and useful for decision-making. Thanks to his contributions, we now have the most comprehensive view of athlete engagement in POW’s history.

For any organization looking for a data analyst who understands athlete networks, community engagement, and impact measurement, Nate is an absolute asset. We’re grateful for his work and highly recommend him.

– Graham Zimmerman, Athlete Alliance Director and Professional Alpinist, Protect Our Winters

I highly recommend Nate as a geospatial data analyst and graphic designer (in the case of our project, using ESRI Storymaps). We were quite particular in what data and stories and images we wanted represented in our Montana Extreme Heat Storymap and how—and Nate was super professional and responsive in getting the job done.

– Beth Covitt, Head of Science Education Research & Evaluation, Broader Impacts Group, University of Montana

I had the immense pleasure of managing Nate for a contract data science project he undertook for RMI. RMI is an international green energy non-profit. Nate's work focused on the environmental justice impact of oil and gas flaring operations in the United States. Nate demonstrated a strong aptitude for geospatial analysis in python and delivered a stunning storyboard presentation in Tableau that highlighted his thorough analysis of social vulnerability and environmental hazards.

His project will be a true asset to our program moving forward. Throughout the process Nate showed himself to be a wonderful self-driven collaborator who was a joy to manage. Furthermore, Nate has a genuine drive to use his talents to address the impending climate crisis. I believe his solid coding skills, impressive abilities to adopt new technology, positive attitude, and excellent work ethic would make him an asset to any team.

– Adrienne Tecza, Senior Data Scientist, RMI

I've known Nate since his time as an Honor's undergrad student at UM. He has consistently delivered not just excellent work products, but excellence in living a life with integrity. He is hard working, very intelligent, and thoughtful in how he approaches projects. On top of that, he's just a fun person to work with. With his newest graduate degree in analytics, he brings a powerful skill set to leveraging data to inform and guide the important decisions we collectively face--how we as business and society will care for the environment.

– Jakki Mohr, Regents Professor of Marketing, University of Montana. Author and speaker. Marketing consultant.

Nate is a smart, capable data scientist who will turn over every stone in his quest to understand human behavior. It's been a pleasure working with him on his two concurrent masters at the University of Montana.

– John Chandler, Data Scientist and Clinical Professor of Marketing, University of Montana

Nate (as his personal endeavors as a rather extreme trail-running, mountain-climbing maniac demonstrate) is not afraid of challenges, setting goals, and pursuing them with dogged determination and a dash of old-world humility. If you are looking for grit, tenacity, and resilience on top of professional skills—Nate's your guy.

– Kevin Keohane, Founder, Brand & Talent Unlimited

Nate's dedication to his craft is apparent in his thoughtful and thorough approach to each assignment. I've worked with Nate on several projects, and the business results delivered by his work have always surpassed my expectations. Nate's attention to detail is remarkable. He takes the time to understand the client's needs and goals and proactively looks for ways to always make the work better. To Nate, there is no finish line.

His ability to research and synthesize complex topics into engaging, easy-to-understand content is impressive. In addition to his outstanding writing skills, Nate is an absolute pleasure to work with. He is professional, communicative, and always willing to go the extra mile to ensure client satisfaction. His positive attitude and collaborative spirit make him a valuable asset to any project.

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend Nate for any project or job.

– Mario Schulzke, COO, Pathlabs

Nate designed our Stay Cool Missoula: Extreme Heat Storymap and he did a fantastic job. The project was a collaboration between three entities — one nonprofit organization and two local government agencies. Nate weaved together three, sometimes differing, perspectives (a challenging task, to be sure!). He was receptive to our input while also offering his own creative ideas.

Nate shined in his ability to combine technical expertise (climate data compilation, graph creation) with an understanding of narrative communication and design aesthetic. Overall, Nate was an excellent collaborator — thorough, timely, patient, and friendly. My team and I had a great experience with Nate and I highly recommend working with him!

– Susan Teitelman, Climate Resilience Specialist at Climate Smart Missoula

If you are looking for consultation/work on anything related to GIS/MAPPING/WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT/STORYMAPS/APPLICATIONS, Nate is your person!!!!
We hired Nate to do some work around GIS this year for the non profit I work for called Touching Land. We weren't sure about what format / platform to use for our deliverables and Nate was an incredible advisor. He is creative and resourceful, willing to try new things to move the project in the right direction. It is very rare to find someone that is willing to step out of their comfort zone to grow and get the right product for the right concept, and Nate is exceptional at this.

– Carolina Rubio-MacWright, Immigration attorney and Founder of Touching Land, a non-profit focused on immigrant rights and empowerment