Lasting Memories

Deborah Dennison
Aug. 4, 1965-Dec. 21, 2025
Pleasanton, California

Deborah Dennison born August 4, 1965 in Chicago, Illinois to Dr Eric Hohnwald and Karen (Jensen) Hohnwald, died December 21, 2025 in Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek, California.

She was the older sister to Brian Hohnwald and Dr Kevin Hohnwald. Debbie grew up in Sarasota, Florida and graduated from high school there.

After acquiring a degree in Business Administration and Accounting she supported herself as a bookkeeper and accountant, and then while married to Jeffery Dennison, working full time, and raising son Derek Dennison and daughter Kaitlin Dennison PhD, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of South Florida with a major in Urban and Regional Planning and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) - which became a lasting passion of her life.

Filling her years with a constant pursuit of learning and education, Debbie became an expert in GIS, remote sensing and imagery analysis – and applying her knowledge to a career path working for both US Government and private sector firms designing, building and operating advanced information processing systems that aided these sponsors and their clients and the general public.

Debbie worked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2009 to 2017. During that time she provided many programs with astounding results, many earning her awards of special recognition. She collaborated with many leading scientists & ranking personnel in support of vital systems for Military Defense, Homeland Security, Emergency Management & Response, including Emergency Operations Centers across the Country. She served as Subject Matter Expert on a vast array of projects that needed GIS and Remote Sensing Technology and routinely performed Project Management activities, preparing Statements of Work, Progress Reports, and Presentations to Government Agencies. She worked with global satellite companies and consultants. She often presented talks at key stakeholder meetings and conferences. Highly sought for her ability to produce quality and time-critical results, she was always working multiple projects - while also completing her master’s degree in GIS from Penn State University. (Selected as 1 of only 50 students admitted that year). Her thesis was titled: Contribution of Normalized Digital Surface Models used in Automatic Building Extraction and was presented at an ASPRS conference. Since then she continually trained herself and trained others. She was a certified GIS Professional, (URISA - now GPN).

In 2017 she decided to pursue her passion for geography, history, and world culture, and leveraging her skill at cartography (map making) and her expertise in remote sensing and imagery, she founded the company GeoJango LLC (https://geojango.com) in Pleasanton, CA. In her final days, she appointed her son Derek to become the new company owner and he now continues the business and the mission she started - to teach others about the world we live in through maps and games with educational and informative and fun and impressive graphic features.

In 2023, if running her own business was not enough, she took on another full time job with an environmental management company, S2SERM, (San Ramon, CA) where she was the Director of GIS & Remote Sensing. S2S recently merged with Verdantas, (an environmental science, engineering, and consulting firm with offices across the US).

Debbie loved travel, hiking and exploring with partner Tim Voss. Many early mornings they would hike the hillsides in nearby parks in and around Pleasanton, California and when work schedules allowed it, travel to visit National Parks and attend conferences.

She saw & learned much on her worldwide travels. A most memorable foreign trip was to Turkey which included a hot air balloon ride, and her final world trip in 2025 was to Southeast Asia with her mother.