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About

Two sisters, two specialties, one small company. Both of us answer the phone.

MIA Consulting is Becca and Rachel Winston. MIA stands for Making Information Accessible, and it has been on the door since 2007. Becca builds the data systems, websites and dashboards; Rachel writes the papers, field guides and films.

Great Salt Lake · MIA Consulting

Becca Winston striking a pose on the running boards of a white Jeep

Becca Winston

GIS, data, websites, dashboards, AI tooling and hosting.

The schema, the map and the screen.

GIS since 2007, starting in county weed work where the data was honest and the tools were not. Twenty years on the job is the same: take what a crew recorded at the edge of a field and turn it into a map a supervisor trusts, a dashboard a board can read, and a number a funder believes.

The stack has changed. ArcGIS gave way to open web maps and self-hosted dashboards; AI now reads field forms and drafts site narratives. What has not changed is that the same person designs the schema, builds the screen and stands behind the number.

  • Statewide dashboards in ten states, from single-file builds to PostGIS-backed systems.
  • SIIPA program work in Florida, Arizona and Utah.
  • Regional builds for the Western Weed Coordinating Committee, SIMP biocontrol monitoring and EDDMapS.
  • Websites for CWMAs, county programs and small businesses: static, fast, nothing to patch.
  • AI intake tooling that reads a paper form and hands back a record, with a person as the last step.
  • The servers every site above runs on: certificates, mail, DNS, backups, security.
“AI should remove paperwork, not judgement. Every extraction ends at a confirmation screen before it touches your data.”
Rachel Winston sweep-netting for biocontrol agents in a field

Rachel Winston

Research, writing, film and the biocontrol community.

Getting it right, and getting it across.

Plant lover for life, but started working in weeds in 2002, managing crews of high school students mapping infestations for county weed programs. Added biocontrol and graphic design during a master's at the University of Idaho, and has worked in research and outreach ever since.

  • Lead editor, Biological Control of Weeds: A World Catalogue of Agents and Their Target Weeds, since 2010.
  • Lead or co-author of more than a dozen USDA Forest Service field guides and technical manuals.
  • Writer and editor of 80+ weed, biocontrol and IPM fact sheets.
  • Lead or co-author of peer-reviewed research, from global reviews of biocontrol safety and impact to prioritizing new weeds for biological control.
  • Producer, writer and narrator of 80+ educational videos.
  • Program assessments and technical reporting for regional collaboratives.
  • Agent petitions and test plant lists, drafted on contract.
The full publication list →

A small shop on purpose

The person who scopes it builds it.

No sales team in front of a junior bench. The person who designs the database writes the code and answers the phone in year three when something needs changing. That means a small number of projects at a time, and nothing lost in translation.

Where we work

Land, parcels, fields, infestations, acres.

State agriculture departments, weed districts and CWMAs, county programs, conservation districts, colleges, and the growers working the same ground, across ten states and three regional programs. We already know what a township is and why the county's boundary does not match yours.

What we do not do

No lock-in, no AI as a strategy.

We don't trap your data on a platform you have to stay on. What we build for you, you own at the end (the code, the database, the documentation), and your data exports with you. Support is a choice, not a dependency.

“The database and the website came back as one product, which is what we needed and had not been able to get anywhere else.”Shelley Osbourne · client
Established
2007
Entity
MIA Consulting LLC
Offices
Pocatello, Idaho · Ogden, Utah
Phone
208.569.1371
Email
info@getmia.net
Serving
The Intermountain West and beyond

Start a project

Tell us what the ground looks like.

A few sentences about the program, the data you already have, and the deadline you are working against is enough to start. You will hear back from one of us, usually within a business day.

Start a project →208.569.1371