Justin Farrow is a versatile professional whose career spans technology, sustainability, geospatial sciences, and the arts. He holds dual bachelor's degrees in Cultural Anthropology (BS) and Philosophy & Religious Studies (BA) from the College of Charleston. Furthering his education, Justin earned dual master's degrees in Global Sustainability (Sustainable Tourism Impact) and Entrepreneurship (Intellectual Property/Building a Sustainable Enterprise) from the University of South Florida (USF), where he also served as the school webmaster for three years and professor's assistant at the Patel College of Global Sustainability. During his time at USF, Justin was a resident leader in the Student Innovations Incubator, spearheading the development of educational communities.  

Growing up in a family-run reprographics shop, Justin was immersed in the world of blueprints, maps, and land surveying equipment. His father, Alan Bradley Farrow (Skip), was a respected artist and businessman in the civil engineering and land surveying communities. From an early age, Justin was involved in blueprint production and deliveries, later becoming a land surveyor himself with Thomas and Hutton Engineering Southstar Division. His experiences in the field eventually led him to pursue higher education at the College of Charleston.  After CofC, he moved to Brooklyn and became involved with real estate and that is when he started his first blog (2002) called Space Independent.  The author of the blog was justiNYC who documented adventures in Bk real estate before anyone wanted to live there yet. Street art and rapid change of gentrification put pressure on communities and justiNYC blogged it - but he stopped being an agent, but rather an observer.   For all real estate related questions he referred you to The LoftNINJA UNRealtor - fellow blogger/ alter ego who had a no nonsense approach to helping those looking for a place to live not be scammed by slumlords or sleazy brokers.  LoftNINJA was the ANTI-Broker, capable of saying what others omitted by telling the truth through ARTvertising.  During this time Justin taught himself HTML and CSS during the cold winter nights in NYC.  In 2006, a landlord friend gave Justin an entire floor of a building's worth of computers and sewing equipment to see what he would do with it.  On the way home he stopped by the Bakery and asked the owner and friend if he could borrow a bread truck and the owner gave him the truck when he heard the idea to retrofit a bread truck into a mobile wireless hub where the homeless could walk up into the back and use our computers to find famliy, jobs and housing opportunities.  We helped you with a resume and gave you a digital ID on a USB.  Justin had formed Home Free Organization, his first non-profit organization.  Justin felt that if you could change your perspective on your situation you inevitably change the situation.  People were no longer homeless, they were home free.  Ultimately Justin was sniped and picked clean by Salvation Army (Bed and BreadtrucK) and the United Way (Way Out) programs.  Ultimately this would be why Justin studied Intellectual Property in graduate school.

In 2007, Justin co-founded Land Surveyors United Global Community, which has since grown into the world's largest professional network for geospatial professionals, with over 21,000 members globally. His expertise in social media aggregation and syndication has amplified the reach of this grassroots community year after year. Today, LSU partners with the National Society of Professional Surveyors, where Justin serves on the Education Committee and has recently (2025) developed a Learning Management System for providing continuing education courses and professional development.

In 2012, Justin began developing a different kind of community, one that allowed any classroom to participate in a sailing voyage around the world.  This became the Beautiful Nation Project and as "Lighthouse Keeper" along with 3 colleagues on a 100% crowdfunded journey in real life and a virtual window into how other kids live in other places-  an online education community initiative designed to inspire young people (ages 6-18) to connect with the planet and each other through the Voyage of Makulu, a 43-foot sailing vessel on a global journey. This was a community to empower educators.  Partnering with History Channel, Reach the World and Agastya Foundation, the project leveraged storytelling and technology to build a global community of young explorers. Justin and his team were among the first to use Google Hangouts to connect classrooms worldwide, engaging over 1.6 million students annually through real-time reports, videos, and interactive sessions on marine ecology, traditional cultures, and STEM research.

In 2015, Justin delivered a TEDx talk titled "Virtual Tourism as the New Geography Class" for the Tampa Robotics Institute, advocating for alternative methods of bringing the world into classrooms beyond traditional maps. He shared hand-drawn maps from students in Puerto Rico and Panama, illustrating how children visualize their world in fundamentally 5 distinct ways backed by data from the National Geographic Society.

Justin's commitment to sustainability extends to his role as a Global Ambassador for the Plastic Ocean Project, bringing together leaders from diverse fields to tackle the issue of plastic pollution while fostering sustainable business models. In 2014, he joined the Board of Directors for the Blue Community Consortium, which supports coastal communities in ocean conservation and sustainability. As the Chief Technology Director, he spearheaded the development of the Blue Community Assessment App, which Marriott Suites in New Smyrna Beach, FL, adopted to track sustainability efforts. His focus later expanded to measuring tourism's impact on entire destination communities. Since 2019, Justin has been a United Nations ECOSOC representative for the United States, contributing to projects on data collection and community impact measurement for small island developing nations.

From 2015 to the present, Justin has served as the webmaster and CTO for the Blue Ocean Film Festival and Make a Difference Media (MADM), overseeing film submissions, judging, and IT operations for festival events featuring over 5,300 ocean films worldwide.  As one of the most important film festivals on planet earth, Justin continues to support BLUE in anticipation of its inevitable return.

He was also named the Provost Professor Assistant of the Year in 2017 for excellence in student support.  In that same year his Capstone project "Climate Strange" was was featured by the United Nations for the  IY2017 International Year for Sustainable Development.

In 2023, Justin became the CTO of IDEAS For Us, a global environmental action organization operating in 14 countries. He also serves as the webmaster for Fleet Farming Organization and Edible Landscapes FL, managing over 150 community gardens in Orlando, FL, and measuring their impact on local communities. His work extends to Liberia, West Africa, where he collaborates on sustainability projects, including habitat protection for 111 endangered species, anti-poaching efforts in the Gola Rainforest, and educational programs in nine counties through Liberia YES (Youth Exploring Solutions).

Since 2021, Justin has worked with the Academy of Spiritual Consciousness Studies (ASCSI) on a paper archive digitization project, recreating and categorizing texts and articles dating back to 1934. Additionally, he teaches a graduate-level certificate course, "Destination Analytics," at the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality, training hospitality students in sustainability metrics for hotels, counties, buildings, restaurants, cruise lines, and tourism-related businesses.

From 2018 to the present, Justin has worked with the Chiles Hospitality Group, developing objective methods and metrics for monitoring and improving their farm-to-restaurant circular economy model. He also serves as a consultant for organizations such as the Future of Cities, creating frameworks for regenerative placemaking and community engagement.

Beyond his professional and academic contributions, Justin is an accomplished photographer with work published in various  Rolling Stone Magazine, photos featured within the pages of more than a dozen (and on the cover of five issues of New York’s "The L Magazine," and showcased online by various news and media outlets across the US, Europe, and Africa.

These days, injecting the human element back into AI is a fascination.  SustAInability, rather.  AI for Good and AI for Education is Justin's primary focus while developing frameworks and ethical modalities for responsible AI use and innovative uses for AI in workflows associated with impact indicator tracking for the UN SDGS (Sustainable Development Goals) and collaborative human reporting of community milestones and update data for their fellow stakeholders.  Some of the AI Tools he has made are PromptZilla, GrantZilla, CourseZilla, BuildZilla, FieldZilla, Simzilla, GlobeZilla, The Zinger (geolocated notes), MOOZ (Virtual Classroom), RSS to Tweet, BigFOOT, Tooladex, Megadex, L.E.A.R.N, T.E.A.C.H,

Justin Farrow's diverse expertise and unwavering dedication to community building, sustainability, and the arts position him as a dynamic leader and innovator across multiple disciplines.