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.
Mary Foster
Mary is part of our customer support team. She is known to eat a huge bowlful of Goldfish every day, which, let's be clear, is not a customer support team requirement. It's simply strongly encouraged, if you catch our drift. She's also into colorful drinks - blue, orange, red, green - you get the idea of drinks and how they can come in different colors. Mary's into them. She honed her customer service chops at Genesco (the company behind Journeys shoe stores and other shoe-related businesses), and she honed her interest in music being the daughter of a guitarist who was in Lynyrd Skynyrd. Cool, though still confounding how they slipped so many Ys into the name. When Mary isn't taking great care of Emma customers, she's likely to be designing clothes under her label, Skinny Riot!, watching her adorable son play soccer, or trying to keep up with her giant Great Dane named London. We probably didn't need to say "giant" in front of Great Dane, did we. You're right.
Brian Fuzzell
Brian was once on The Price is Right. He's also part of Emma's design team and helps customers on HTML- and design-related matters, but we thought his brush with Bob Barker-dom was more important than anything else we can say here. To clarify, he didn't actually make it onto the PIR stage, but he was positioned right behind the bidding stations and wound up on camera shouting at people to bid one dollar, one dollar, ONE DOLLAR! Smart, Brian. Smart. Like a number of his co-workers, Brian is a musician and was once a serious, touring musician, having jammed with Conan O'Brien (take that, Bob Barker) and gotten used to sleeping in the cramped corner of a touring van. It was really the sleeping in uncomfortable vans, not so much jamming with A-list celebrities, that led Brian to rethink his career direction. Funny. His current, non-touring, band is called The Foxymorons, and when Brian isn't lighting up the drums (what, you can't light up drums?) he's working his way through all of the Hitchcock films. Right on. Brett Ratner, you're clearly next. Also, Brian's nickname is Barry, so if you could please re-read this entire paragraph mentally inserting "Barry" any time it says "Brian," that'd save us a bunch of rewrite time.
Grey Garner
Grey is our product manager, helping us craft the very best features for Emma's service. Speaking of crafting things, Grey is known for crafting beer in his own home, which means he's also known for crafting beer-related phrases like "raisin-fig nose" and "sweet malty breadiness" and "it's okay to drink in your basement." Is Grey also known for crafting actual crafts? He's asked us not to comment on the matter, which leads us to believe that his home-brewed beer bottles may come adorned with crocheted doilies and little yarn pom-pon thingies. Before joining Emma, Grey helped manage a post-production studio that handled a variety of editing projects for music-industry-clients. He's been an engineer, a producer, a recording artist and a secret maker of crafts. Oops. Sorry, Grey. Secret's out, buddy.
Jonathan Gesinger
If you're curious about kolaches, you've come to the right bio. This delicious Czechoslovakian pastry features a small bread roll inside which one may find a range of fillings, from traditional fruit to savory meats and cheeses. But if you're curious about kolaches inasmuch as they pertain to this bio you're still reading for some reason, we'll break it down: kolaches are tasty, Jonathan loves kolaches, and it's really fun to talk about kolaches. So then, let's continue with some non-kolache-related things you should know about Jonathan. He heads up our business development efforts in Austin, our newest satellite office, which is located a short drive from West, Texas, famous for its kolache-themed rest stop Czech Stop. Also, he founded Twin Engine Creative, a brand and marketing agency where he served for seven years as founder, managing partner and that dude who keeps talking about kolaches. Before that, he helped lead marketing efforts for the Seattle Mariners, where he introduced Ken Griffey, Jr. to a little-known but much loved international pastry. And that pastry was, of course, the croissant.
Delaney Gray
Delaney is our community analyst. You know, numbers and such. Speaking of numbers, Delaney estimates that roughly 25% of her home’s square footage is devoted to cookbooks, cooking magazines and kitchen supplies, including a stand mixer she’s christened Julia Child, the same name she says she would give a boat were she ever to own watercraft. When she isn’t baking or cooking or naming things after Julia Child, Delaney enjoys heckling the opponents at Nashville Sounds minor league baseball games (her inside tip: focus your barbs on the base coaches, not the players), attending book club, adding to her Ultimate List of Get To Know You Questions (there are currently 175), and spending time with her three cats and three dogs, none of which, we are assured, are named Julia Child.
Jay Hargis
Jay is a member of our software engineering team and spends a fair amount of his time writing code. He also spends a fair amount of time breaking code that seemingly worked just fine, so if you're considering dropping a go-ahead-bet-you-can't-break-THIS-code challenge on someone, maybe that someone should be Jay. This could be a really nice connection here - you with your code that needs breaking, and Jay with a penchant for breaking code. Well look, we've made the intro, and you guys can really take it from here. In his spare time, Jay collects vintage skateboard decks and owns the first three John Lucero, one of which is signed - by John Lucero, not someone else, in case that wasn't clear - and he hopes to someday acquire a Natas Kaupas 101. If the last sentence didn't exactly wow you, you're likely part of the group known as The Rest of Us, Who Know Nothing About Vintage Skateboards But Think It's Cool Anyway. Jay is an active frolfer (is it still okay to call it frolfing?) and snowboarder, and he's currently teaching the latter to his three-year-old daughter, who really enjoys it. Is she a Natas Kaupas of the slopes in the making? You bet your John Lucero.
Jim Hitch
Jim stymied chili experts everywhere by uniting the meat-laden, cheesy, gut-bombing tradition of a chili cook-off with something as ridiculous as -- wait for it -- celery. This auspicious moment occurred during Emma's own chili cook-off, where Jim's Buffalo Chicken Chili recipe handily earned him the title of reigning chili champion. Jim's also known around these parts as our director of community, leading our efforts to build a customer community that's loyal, happy and immensely fond of celery. Jim's just really committed to celery, people. Before joining us, Jim served as a partner in an insurance and financial services firm, having earned his degree in finance from Belmont University, and he continues to participate in his family's business, Wampler's Farm Sausage, whose delicious new Celery Sausage will no doubt be available soon at a grocery store near you.
Nathan Hubbard
Nathan is part of our stellar systems engineering squad. An avid motorcyclist (motorcycler?), he once took a two-month solo ride around the country, seeing parts of America he'd only read about in books, like Mt. Rushmore, the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Yellowstone, World's Largest Twine Ball, and Meteor Crater. The Big Twine people are always trying to sneak into that list, aren't they. Look, it's a big ball of twine, we get it. When not on his bike, or thinking about exceptionally large twine, Nate is likely to be found behind a camera, or a telescope, or a ham radio. His list of hobbies - and the equipment they require - is a long one, to the point where Nathan jokes that he's a founding member of the Too Many Hobbies club. That club may or may not actually exist, but if it does, membership dues are $10,000 and payable to Nathan. Thanks. Nathan grew up in Nashville (and even won second place in a "bug identification" contest at the Adventure Science Center) before a long stint in San Diego, a city with fabulous weather but a disappointing selection of bugs to identify. He's now back in Nashville.
Mallory Hull
Mallory is part of our agency relations team, a team she joined after an initial stint as an Emma intern extraordinaire post-college. That college was East Tennessee State University, FYI, and Mallory was the 2007-08 Advertising Student of the Year, also FYI, and she just so happened to graduate magna cum laude, triple FYI. There are just things you need to know about Mallory’s college career and a series of FYIs seemed appropriate. When she’s not taking care of Emma agencies, Mallory enjoys tacos, and outdoor activities like kickball, being careful to avoid kickballery for thirty minutes - scratch that, two days - after eating food from a taco, or really any, truck. She also enjoys running, and noise-making, with a particular interest in making eerily accurate siren noises. The sirens are so realistic you might believe a fire truck is actually heading your way. Or maybe something near you is on fire - best not to take any chances blowing it off as Mallory up to her old tricks, friend.
Kevin Jennings
Kevin has what some people, especially people who live in France, like to call joie de vivre. It means waffles on the side, which leads nicely into the fact that Kevin loves eating breakfast, including but not limited to fast food with fast food prizes, including but not limited to crowns featuring characters from Twilight. But what potential customers who talk to Kevin on the phone notice about him is his business savvy. You might say that Kevin has more business expertise than you can shake a waffle at. One day, he might be running around the office wearing his Twilight crown shouting "Team Edward!" and the next day he'll be delivering a speech to business school students who have no idea about the waffles or the crown but are awfully impressed anyway. The point is, Kevin knows what he's talking about, and he's likely to inspire you ... or at least bring a sense of joie de vivre, which evidently doesn't have anything to do with waffles, unless you pronounce it in a certain way.