Meet our people: Operations
Kat Amano
Kat's official role at Emma is Coordinator of All Things Creative, which means she's an über project manager for everything from website copy to template design schedules and even Emma's giving back efforts. Her slightly less official role is Complete Badass, which means she is a complete badass. Examples of Kat's badassery include: 1) Having a tattoo of the Samurai code of conduct; 2) Do we really need to have a number two? 3) Didn't think so. Kat grew up going to Comic-Con International with her dad (who himself writes and designs comic books) and loves that art form. She also loves cookies and has estimated that she has a 3:1 cookie-eating ratio, relative to the average person. Therefore, she has extrapolated that if that average person eats 30,000 cookies in his lifetime, Kat will have eaten 90,000. Take that, average person! Also, it's important to note that Kat is a martial arts enthusiast (see earlier note re: badassery), so proceed with caution if you plan to challenge the merits of the 90,000-cookie plan.
Patrick Block
Patrick is Emma's director of financial planning and analysis, crunching the all-important numbers and dropping in-the-know phrases like "How's that P&L?" and, "We'll see what the balance sheet has to say about that" on unsuspecting colleagues and office passersby. He honed those financial analystisizing chops at several fine companies pre-Emma, including Nashville-based Healthways, Health Net, and Tommy Hilfiger. Which might explain his penchant for wearing virtually nothing but Hilfiger clothing. (Note to Victoria's Secret: Thanks for not hiring Patrick Block.) An avid bike rider — ahem, cyclist — Patrick is also a three-time bocce champion (take that, you two-trophy pretenders), skier and rock climber. He holds a degree in Arts, Business and Chinese (in that order) from Trinity University in San Antonio and speaks conversational Mandarin. And he reportedly fashions his own notebooks out of large binder clips and paper. It's more freakish than it sounds.
Kinney Littlejohn, Jr.
Kinney is our bookkeeper, serving on our operations team. A Tennessee State University grad, Kinney majored in Economics and Finance and (rather appropriately) served as vice president of the Economics and Finance Club, known for their wild parties where “wild” is typically replaced by “math.” In the working world, Kinney has spent time at FedEx, Comcast and Bank of America, and he spent six years as a Navy jet mechanic based out of Jacksonville and Italy. He loves travel, reading, running, movies and tomatoes, which you probably didn't expect to see after “movies” but there it is. Kinney will always ask for extra tomatoes on his sandwich or extra pico de gallo on his burrito, and if it's some sort of sandwich-burrito you might see a slightly confused look on Kinney's face for just a moment. Kinney also loves to laugh but is admittedly terrible at jokes. It's sort of like the cobbler whose family has no shoes, but on second thought not really at all like that.
Sara McManigal
Sara is our director of talent, helping us find, woo, hire and then nurture the rockstars who make up Emma's staff. Sara is also from Nebraska, which means she often regales prospective candidates and longtime colleagues and pretty much anyone within shouting distance with Nebraska-related trivia. Did you know, for instance, they have a replica of Stonehenge made out of cars? It's called Carhenge, and we didn't make that up. Sara wields a degree in Music Business and Marketing from Belmont University, where she was a member of the (nationally ranked) Belmont Speech and Debate Team and the Belmont Service Corp and the Student Advisory Board and president of her student council in high school. It really is amazing what you can learn about people when you actually read all the way to the bottom of their resumés.
Christine McPherson
Christine is Emma's office coordinator. She's typically the first person to arrive at Emma each day, and because of that the second to arrive is usually our good friend Coffee. Without Coffee, mornings, and talking to people, would be difficult. Without Christine, pretty much everything else would be. Christine is highly organized yet also highly crafty — not in a wouldn't-trust-my-toddler-with-her crafty, but actual makes-cool-stuff-with-yarn-and-things crafty. Actual crafts. She owns a Japanese screen-printing kit and makes custom cards and t-shirts, and she quilts with her grandmother. We might as well have just said that cute kittens and bunnies made of velvet are having a heart-shaped pillow fight — it's the same awwwwwww, isn't it? Thought so. Anyway, you'd like Christine's grandmother.
Jerry Morrison
Jerry is on our internal IT support team. He hails from Huntington, West Virginia, which is also the home of Jesco White, the Dancing Outlaw. And Marshall University. To be clear, Huntington would prefer the list be 1) Marshall and 2) Jesco the Dancing Outlaw. Or even 1) Marshall. Huntington is also home of Tudor's Biscuit World, serving giant, hamburger-sized biscuits called things like the "Peppie" and the "Tootie." So far, we're at 1) Marshall, 2) the Dancing Outlaw, and 3) giant biscuits named Tootie. This Huntington sounds like our kind of place. Prior to joining Emma, Jerry was in a band called Bleach that had much success and even won a Dove Award. He continues to be into music, and computers, and outdoors-y stuff with his family, but not if the outdoors-y stuff involves mayonnaise of any sort. You'd be surprised how many outdoor activities involve mayo. Or giant biscuits.
Tim Mulron
Tim is Emma's grand poobah of strategy, bringing shape to our overall direction as a company and ensuring that the phrase grand poobah lives on for at least a few more years. You're welcome, Barney Rubble. A graduate of Cal Berkeley and the Wharton School, Tim worked his poobah magic at companies like @HOME Network, HBO (Home Box Office, not Hortense Boofant Organics, in case there was some confusion there) and Asurion prior to joining Emma. He turned a printing company around back in the day. He helped bring Dunkin' Donuts to Middle Tennessee. He's owned a successful chain of car washes out west. Once, he saved a truck full of puppies with his bare teeth. True story. In all of it, perhaps with the exception of the puppies, Tim loves thinking about how vision, strategy, brand and culture all fit together. Other things Tim loves thinking about, in no particular order: In-N-Out Burger, the incredible service USAA offers its customers, magic whiteboard markers that never ever run dry, and In-N-Out Burger. (It's that good, people.)
Reggie Murray
Reggie is part of Emma's IT Operations team, taking good care of things like computers, and phones, and networks, and networked computer phones, and possibly even phones that have computer networks built right into the espresso machine connector flange. What will they think of next? In addition to his work with office machinery, Reggie also works with several musical instruments, chief among them the saxophone — he’s opened for jazz great Larry Carlton and played with Bonnie Raitt. He's so musically inclined, in fact, that he keeps a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart action figure on his desk, although we're struggling to see where the action part happens unless you can reenact entire concerts because you own the complete set of Viennese Imperial Court Action Figures in which case, dude, that's amazing, because we made it up just now. Reggie received his Bachelors of Music Education from Loyola University (New Orleans) and his Masters of Music from the University of New Orleans.
Art Quanstrom
Art doesn't eat dinner. He's also Emma's email delivery specialist, but we thought the not-eating-dinner part was a stronger lead. Originally from Atlanta, Art is a drummer who once played a show in Jellico, Tennessee, where he was forced, at gunpoint, to continue playing until 3 a.m. Note: If your band ever decides the road to glory goes through Jellico, Tennessee, you should apparently quit that band. Art is against mayonnaise, radishes and sandals (most of all Crocs) but for The Police and, to a lesser extent, Sting’s solo work. Other extents that lessened: Phil Collins, Don Henley, Glenn Frey and, okay, pretty much everyone once in The Eagles. Art is a graduate of MTSU and, prior to joining Emma, helped manage a studio that produced commercial jingles, not to be confused with the solo work of Don Henley. Oh, and Art secretly dreams of besting Jules Verne’s circumnavigationary (it’s a word) efforts by one day, you know, just to stick it to Jules Verne.
Scott Sears
Scott is Emma's director of operations, and though we know his first name (Scott) and his last name (Sears), there remains a mysterious shroud of sorts around his middle name (Murgatroyd?). Still, Scott ______ Sears boasts an impressive Nashville resume, as one of the owners of the city’s original ISP, Telalink, and now as co-owner of the fabulous Nashville restaurant Flyte, known for its great selections of wine, its commitment to locally grown food, and its utterly kick-ass (to use industry terminology) dishes. Scott’s Flyte co-owner is also named Scott (middle name Eaton), and the two Scotts not only formed a restaurant together but also formed a band, Room 101, back in the day. Room 101 was apparently “huge in the frathouse circuit” in the mid-'90s and would have played songs by the likes of Kurt Donald Cobain, Billy Patrick Corgan and Eddie Louis Severson III, which in a joke about middle names doesn’t really work at all. Thanks a ton, Eddie Vedder.
