Meet our people.
If you're an Emma customer, it's very likely you've gotten to know one or more of the people pictured here. Perhaps you've met several of them. Perhaps you know one person quite well but have only spoken briefly with two others. Here's your chance to put a face with a name, or two names with two faces, and so on and so forth.
Geoff Alday
Geoff is a user interface designer who worked on product development teams for companies like echomusic for several years before joining Emma. Before that, Geoff was an animator at Magnetic Dreams, and he still loves to draw. Furthermore, Geoff is a magician. Meaning not that he does amazing feats with our product (which he does), but that he does tricks requiring top hats and playing cards. Which is not to say that he wears a top hat to the office every day -- just that he knows how to use one. Reports that Geoff is planning a stunt involving a refrigerator in one of the Emma kitchens are unconfirmed. Let's just say be careful where you put your sandwich. Other interesting people who like magic include Neil Patrick Harris, Nikola Tesla and Steve McQueen, who knew not to mess with his friends' sandwiches.
Brooks Alford
Brooks is part of our sales team, having joined Emma from the laboratories of Vanderbilt University, where his work as a biophysics research assistant had him planning and performing fluorescence imaging experiments with a confocal microscope. If there’s one thing we’ve found, it’s that most of your talented sales folks are somewhere out there performing fluorescence imaging experiments with confocal microscopes. Seriously, go get them. Brooks has a working knowledge of written and spoken German, and we’re not sure if that’s somehow related or not, but rumor (or perhaps rumour) has it that Brooks will occasionally take on the accent of the person with whom he’s speaking on the phone. If, by luck, you sound exactly like Murray from Flight of the Conchords, please call now.
John Allen
John is a part of our quality assurance team, where he helps spot any bugs in new Emma features. Stop by his desk some afternoon, and you may notice the lucky blue Koosh ball that's accompanied him from job to job for many years. Stay awhile longer, and you'll learn that John has broken every bone in his body, save for two (extremely lucky and resilient) femurs, and he once had a motorcycle accident from which there is still leather somewhere inside his body. It's at this point that you'll begin to wonder if the Koosh ball isn't so much lucky as it is cursed by ancient gods of freakish bone-breaking and unfortunate experiences with leather. Prior to joining us at Emma, John honed his QA chops at Lexis Nexis and earned his B.S. from MTSU, where he also played volleyball. Today, John lives a quiet, accident-free life with his family on a farm outside of Nashville, where he keeps rescued cats, cows, and donkeys. As the old adage goes, lucky in donkeys, unlucky in freakish bone-breaking.
Kat Amano
Kat's official title at Emma is Design Consultant, which means she helps coordinate the flow of design requests and work between our customers and designers. Her unofficial title 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 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.
Cassie Berman
Cassie is a member of our Agency Relations team. She's also a writer, even among the writerly crowd that is Emma. She was an editor for many years at Business Wire, and she wrote and performed as part of the band Silver Jews until 2009 when that fine band called it quits. For SJ, she did more than write and play bass - planning and managing extensive tours, facilitating merchandise sales, hiring and training employees, coordinating publicity and producing music videos. A band is a business, and if the band happens to involve Jack White, it is likely to be known as One of Fourteen Side Businesses, With Seven More on the Way By Summer. Cassie hails from Louisville, a city she says sounds just fine pronounced any way you choose - Looavull, Looaville or Luhvull (note that Looeeevill isn't on the menu). It was there in the big L that she inherited her grandmother's four-string banjo and her love of horses. Which may be why Cassie becomes suspiciously popular right around Derby time. Get your bets in early this year, folks.
Patrick Block
Patrick is Emma’s in-house financial analyst, 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.
Susan Blue
Susan is our director of content, overseeing a vast network of staff writers, bloggers and tweeters, and an equally extensive plan and calendar framing it all. Prior to joining Emma, Ms. Blue honed her editorial empire-building skills at companies like Citysearch and AOL, and before joining the corporate world she taught English in Tennessee, Minnesota and California. Is it weird that someone whose last name is Blue says one of her favorite movies is called Blue? Is it also weird that the director of that movie is named Krzysztof Kieslowski? And what do we think about the fact that Susan Blue's middle name is Gray? If you're not yet convinced this is a full-fledged mystery in the making, consider that as kids, SGB and her brother once created their own secret language, which included her first catch phrase, Zick it. Susan's interest in languages has since evolved to include an appreciation for murder mysteries, mid-century fonts, Japanese notebooks and the French spelling of macarons. Someday all of this will make zick-it-like sense.
Jamie Bradley
Jamie is a member of Emma’s sales team and wears gigantic sunglasses. Not all the time, mind you, just when it’s particularly sunny or time to show someone with regular-size sunglasses how it’s really done. A native of Texas and attendee of both St. Edward’s University and Belmont University, Jamie managed a shoe store (Bandolino) and worked as an account executive at an artist merchandise company (Stuph Clothing) before joining Emma. She lists “Raising Arizona” as her favorite movie of all time (well done) and lists Combos as her favorite snack (editor’s endorsement withheld). And when she’s not using her voice to dazzle Emma customers on the phone, Jamie can often be found doing vocal impressions of other people, all of whom invariably end up sounding like a 70-year-old southern woman. When it comes to vocal impressions, the conventional wisdom goes, do one elderly voice and do it well. Recently, Jamie adopted a Red Panda at the Nashville Zoo, though the adoption rights apparently don’t include any Bring a Red Panda to Work options. At least that’s the impression we get, not having seen any Red Pandas loitering in the Emma kitchen.
Daniel Brown
Daniel leads our team of wonderfully talented graphic designers. Before joining Emma, Daniel worked on an organic farm and lived in a tent near the Rio Grande where, in his words, he and his girlfriend/tent-mate dreamed of saving up enough to eat at Applebee’s. Not long after realizing the dream of Rip Roarin’ Ribs and Xtreme Cheddar Poppers, Daniel packed up and moved to Nashville, where new, less Applebee-centric dreams would take hold. In addition to his talents at surviving the traditional post-college-tent-and-organic-farming-and-cheddar-popper adventure, Daniel’s also a skilled carpenter and lives with his wife/former tent-mate and daughter Stella in their first house. Occasionally, they eat at Applebee’s.
Claire Burns
Claire specializes in all things delivery. Except for pizzas, which are handled by an entirely different team. At Domino’s. Claire’s prior work experience includes such interesting roles as voiceover artist, Yellowstone tour guide, background screener, Deschutes River (Oregon) whitewater rafting and kayaking guide, manager of a New York restaurant owned by Stephen and Billy Baldwin (known in celebrity circles as Not Alec), and painter of one of the giant guitar sculptures that adorned many of Nashville's parks and sidewalks for a time (Claire's guitar was even featured on the cover of a book about our lovely, oversized-guitar-infested city). Claire also lists Clapping With One Hand as a talent, which may provide the answer to one of the universe’s oldest questions. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Just ask Claire for a demonstration.