Café Spotlight: Jon & Cheryl of Jbird Supply Coffee Roasters

We recently sat down for a quick chat with the owners of JBird Supply Coffee Roasters, the new espresso bar, here in the Café at Studio IX. Jon & Cheryl had some great things to share about how they got here & where they’re headed. We couldn’t be happier to have them with us.

Studio IX:

Ok, so let’s jump right in.

Jon: What you got, Greg?

Studio IX:

First things first, tell us who you are, what it is you do, how it all got started.

Jon:

Okay. Well my name's Jon. I am one of the owners of JBird Supply Coffee Roasters. The company started selling in the summer of 2018. It was an idea that I had, based on previous work history and my love of coffee.. Cheryl and I had been talking about finding a way to make the family unit into a business. How can we progress as a family and spend more time together. So that started our roasting business. Been doing it for about two years now.

Cheryl:

My name's Cheryl. I'm the bird.

Studio IX:

Cheryl the bird?

Cheryl:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Studio IX:

So let’s talk a bit about what drives you. What are you guys passionate about?

Cheryl:

I'm really passionate about connection, and a sense of community, about not taking anything for granted. And so I feel like anything that I'm doing, I'm going to put everything I have into it and use it as a bridge, in a way, to connect with other people. Whether it's the person in front of me, or in this case with the coffee, the farmers that are growing the beans. Even to the graphic designer on the other end of the computer. I don't know, I just feel like we're all in this together and we've all got shit to do, so we might as well drink good coffee and try to take care of each other in the process.

Studio IX:

Well said.

Jon:

I'm passionate about starting something on your own and having independence in your life. I've worked for a lot of corporate jobs. I've worked for a lot of small business owners, and I think it's important to have some kind of control over what you do in your day. Coffee is a great way for me to develop our own system, our own way of being. I feel like coffee kind of has a lot of pretension to it these days, and there's ways to go about it where you don't have to have that stigma attached to it. Production, independence, artistic expression — these are the things that drive me.

And like Cheryl said, the coffee growers, they're the ones that do all the work. We just get paid to have fun with it. It’s really important for us to convey that there is this whole other side to it. Where it comes from and the people it affects. It's important that others learn about that process.

Studio IX:

In the short time that I've gotten to know you both, it’s very clear that you’re extremely personable, community driven people. There’s a kind of old-world hospitality about you, that’s rare anymore. Taking a real interest in people. Getting to know your customer base, developing those relationships. — I'd love to hear a bit more about what that means to you.

Jon:

Yeah. I think we're kind of in-betweeners, generationally. Being born in the early eighties and we're not super techie people. We're not like the millennials that are obsessed with being seen or videoed or recapped or whatever it is. You know? And it's kind of like a coffee house, or a fucking punk thing, or whatever it is. It's all about communicating with people and spending time together. So for us to come in here and have a space where you're not just seeing the same faces every day, which you could do at any coffee shop, but people are actually doing their creative work here. You really want to connect with them and you get ideas from them, you get energy from them, and you can give that back, too.

Jon:

And I think on a day to day basis, that's just who we are. You know? It's like, if we're out in the world, we're going to open a door for somebody, say thank you, make eye contact, and just be personable. Life's short. You don't have to be a dick every day. You can open up a little bit and find a way to make somebody happy.

Cheryl:

I think for me, I grew up in a bar. Multiple bars. My family, my parents, I'm an only child and they were very young and they drank a lot. If you spend hours and hours in a bar, you learn the art of shooting the shit and grow an appreciation for honest conversation.

It’s important that we slow down and just talk to one another. Who knows what's going to come out, who knows what you're going to come up with. Who knows what you have in common. I think coffee bars can have that same rejuvenating kind of effect that as maybe a bar can. Although that's not very rejuvenating (laughter), — but it's a place where you can feel like your family in a way.

Studio IX:

Can you guys share a memorable moment with us, — a turning point? Anything that stands out.

Jon:

I've been doing coffee for 15 plus years and helped open numerous cafes, ran and managed all sorts of places, and this has been an entirely new project. Once we started producing coffee and it tasted great and we got good feedback, I felt like that was a big turning point for us.

We have an eight year old son and his involvement, I just think it's going to be a really cool memory for him. Looking back on it, however long this lasts. That part of his upbringing has been in being part of this family business. Being involved with it.

Studio IX:

Yeah.

Cheryl:

I think a major turning point has been coming into Studio IX. I still had a full time job up until two weeks ago. So having the ability to go all in and really focus on things has been huge. I don't know which way we're turning... I don't know if we're turning left or right or making a U turn. I don't know where we're going, but we're going in a different way so you can call it a turning point. That's for sure.

Jon:

Yeah, it's a big change. Being here, having an everyday interaction based around the coffee, the people, the interactions, and stuff like that. This is kind of been our goal for a while, so it's nice to get this started.

Studio IX:

We're excited to have you guys.

Studio IX:

On that note, what does the future hold for you all. For JBird? Things you’re looking to?

Jon:

I mean, for me, I had two goals when I started the company: to roast coffee and make the Black Flag t-shirt. And after I did that, Cheryl's like, you can retire. So everything's a bonus these days. I look at every day as an opportunity to learn. I'm not afraid to fail, which is good. I keep telling myself that it's okay if it doesn't work and I don't want to make this into some juggernaut. No attempts to take over the world here. That's not my goal with it. It's just to be respectful with it and take care of our community, and be respectful of the environment. There's much bigger things out there than our little coffee company. We're just trying to make our little mark, get by and have a family.

Studio IX:

And you, Cheryl?

Cheryl:

I'm not very goal oriented? I just wing it?

Studio IX:

You're in the moment.

Cheryl:

Yeah, I am. And I mean in general, I don't want any more out of life then really to be able to pay my bills and enjoy my family. So as long as we can make that happen with Studio IX and continue to do whatever we want creatively with coffee, I’m good.

Studio IX

Would be so nice if more people had those values.

Jon:

I guess in America, to feel like you're on the next level, you have to have these gargantuan ideas of, if I'm not at this benchmark in this amount of time and the company's not... But I don't want to get to the point where there's shareholders involved and stuff like that and I don't want to work for anybody. That's the whole reason why I started this. We talked about companies like Stumptown a lot as a nice, mentor to look at it for specialty coffee because they did what they wanted and then they got to a point where they could sell, and the owner sold, and he didn't have to deal with all the corporate crap that came along with it. He got out at that point. So I think if it ever got to the point where something like that could happen, I would stop doing it. I would do something else.

Studio IX:

Last question. What are you guys excited about that you're serving right now, that you want everyone to know about?

Jon:

I mean, I love the hidden gems that are just like... I think this time of the year, our chai is really fun and it's not our coffee we're just planning to talk about, but for a drink in February, we have such brilliant chai called Prana, and it pairs really well with our espresso. So you could get that. And then just trying any of our coffees on pour-over or Chemex, where you really get different notes in the coffee, compared to just actual dash brew. That's always fun too.

Cheryl:

Jon says he’s going to do something with strawberries this year. It will be totally badass.

Greg:

Yeah. I love that you guys do that too. You and I were talking about it. Just that you switch gears and go with what's fresh and like... Coffee-wise, garnishes, additives, and everything like that. You can stay fresh and stay in season with anything you do really. You just have to work at it.

Cheryl:

We kind of hope to do the same thing with food here at Studio IX. Again, trying to get different food trucks in here on a rotating but consistent basis. And then trying out different pastries, seeing what people like, but it doesn't have to be the same thing every day. And that's kind of the cool thing when you're the boss. It's like, I'm sick of that and I get to stop. I can do something different. As long as people will buy it so I can pay my bills. Yeah.

Greg:

Thank you guys. So good to have you here.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ROBIN MACKLIN

Studio IX:              So tell us who you are & what you do.

Robin:  My name is Robin Macklin. I'm  a principal member of Myth-Talent, a team that matches people with jobs that are a good fit for them. We support the local tech community. We meet with individuals, find out what makes them tick professionally, and then help them to find a way to achieve that.

Studio IX:              What are you passionate about?

Robin:  I love photography, I stepped back from it years ago, professionally, though I still have some photography clients and I love the work. I do a lot of volunteer photography to support organizations in town. I also love to exercise, bonfires, hosting a good gathering of friends. & I give myself my own haircuts, which is good.

Studio IX:              You do a very nice job. (Laughter)

Robin:  Thanks, it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.

Robin: I think most of all I love to write. That’s really my thing.  I'm making it a steady and regular part of my life for the first time ever. I've had a few essays published, but I really want to finish a novel. I have a screenplay I'm working on as well, so yeah.  I’m fine tuning a structured approach to it, one that I can realistically stick to.

Studio IX: Do you see a connection between your passions and the work that you do?

Robin Macklin:  Yeah. You know, I have an introvert's set of hobbies, but I actually love to communicate with folks and I enjoy free flowing conversation and the conviviality. So it makes sense that I would be doing this. My work benefits from my natural ability to move from one thing to another.

Studio IX:              Yeah. It's all connected.

Studio IX:              What's the best mistake you've ever made?

Robin Macklin:  Most people who are in a service industry have at one point probably had an unhealthy client relationship.  Long ago, I learned that some checks just aren’t worth it. Early in my career, there was a period when my most profitable client relationship was with someone who was pretty abusive, but it was a lucrative contract so I just endured it. And then one day I ended up firing her by accident, with a misdirected email. It wasn't great. But after about 60 seconds of panic, relief really washed over me. The lesson I learned was that enduring a relationship of that kind is toxic to all the other aspects of life. It was a seed and from that seed grew this sense that I wanted to be doing things in a different way, be intentional in relationship development, and to be doing work that really benefited everyone involved, including myself.

Robin Macklin:  And here we are, Myth Talent does exactly that. Every single thing we do passes through the lens of, does this help an individual to thrive? Does it make them happier? The idea is that a thriving individual leads to a more energized company, and more energized companies lead to a prosperous community. So we're trying to help everybody, one person at a time. And honestly I could point to that mistake, that email, as the point at which I just started acting on my convictions.

Studio IX:              Such a great story.

Studio IX: Where do you see yourself and the company in 5 to 10 years?

Robin Macklin:  I mean we’re aiming to be the most powerful company in the world. (laughter). But how do we get there? That's the question.

Studio IX:              That. is the question. (laughter)

Robin Macklin:  But in all seriousness, we’d like to continue to grow in our capacity to deliver the services that we do. To improve people’s lives, build a healthier business community and community at large.

Studio IX:              Love it.

Studio IX:              Last question. What do you like about being here at Studio IX?

Robin Macklin: I love Studio IX just for the fact that it exists in the way that it does. It's been absolutely invaluable to my career, my presence here. I've met so many great people. And the coffee is great.

Studio IX:              Thanks.

Robin Macklin:  Yeah, the coffee is really good. It's so much better than the coffee I make at home.

Studio IX:              It's Virginia's fault.

Robin Macklin:  Yeah, I saw that in the last Spotlight. You can put it in this one, too.

Studio IX:              We certainly will. Virginia’s the best. (laughter)

Studio IX: Thanks for your time, Robin.

Robin Macklin:  Thank you, Greg.

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: ELIZA EVANS & VIRGINIA RIELEY

This month we sat down with exhibiting artist’s Eliza Evans & Virginia Rieley to learn more about their work, their long standing collaboration and their current exhibit in The Gallery at Studio IX.

Studio IX: Who are you?

Eliza Evans: My name is Eliza Evans. I am a mother, a portrait painter, a permaculture farmer, and an amateur herbalist . My identity is rooted firmly in the place I make my home.  North Garden is where I’m planted and its where I do my planting. 

Studio IX: What type of artist are you? What medium/s do you work in?

Evans: I paint acrylic portraits from life.  Usually on wood but sometimes on other surfaces.  

Studio IX: How do you approach your work?

Evans: Generally in a relaxed way. But I’m quick. I don’t want the person to get bored or tired sitting there.

Studio IX: What is your process? 

Evans: To do the portraits I set up my palette and sit across from the person/people I’m painting and ask them to look at me.  If it’s a wiggly kid I tell them that if I whistle they have to look at me.  I think I usually start at the forehead but generally I spend the most time on the eyes.  I try to give every eye a sparkle.  I try to really see the colors in the shadows and light. When I’m done I let them pick whatever background color they want.  I always do that last before signing in the middle on the bottom (I like symmetry) and dating the back.

Studio IX: What inspires you?

Evans: Rainbows.  I know that sounds corny but is there anything more visually pleasing?   Also trees growing, birds, finding cool mushrooms, good food, St. John’s wort and comfrey and nettles and red clover, funny things my kids say and do, really good smells like garlic cooking or honeysuckle or the orange tree that’s blooming in my room right now…

And we just got high speed internet in the last week out here on Wild Orchard Farm and there’s this permaculture lady in Australia named Morag Gamble and I’ve been binging her Youtube videos.  She’s an inspiration.  My goodness!!  Also I’m inspired by my parents who are so active and productive and engaged and helpful and loving.  It’s amazing!  I’m incredibly privileged to be their child and to be able to raise my own three wonderful children next door to them.  They take such amazing care of us all. 

Also Greta Thunberg and all the Indigenous  people and activists who are standing up to the bad guys to protect this precious Earth.

Studio IX: When did you & Virginia first meet?

Evans: In kindergarten.

Studio IX: When did you start working together as artists?

Evans: Second grade.

Studio IX: How do you go about making work together?

Evans: For the last 15 years we’ve made a calendar together: “Every Day is a Holiday!”  We write all the holidays and content together and individually I paint the portraits and Virginia puts it together with collage and hand-letters everything.

Studio IX: How did the idea for the calendars come about?

Evans: We were just joking around in the kitchen of the organic farm where we used to work together, and came up with it and starting laughing uncontrollably at the holidays we came up with.

Studio IX: Could you share us a story?  Something that stands out in your time working together.

Evans: We always notice when our holidays come true and it’s pretty often.  Like on “Republicans Are People Too Day”, the Republican Congress finally ended the government shutdown after many weeks of people not getting paid a few years ago.  We also decided to take out Life Sucks Day after a few years, because many bad things were happening on that day.

Studio IX: What do you hope people take from your work?

Evans: To find little things to appreciate and celebrate every day.  Remember to laugh.

Studio IX: What’s next?

Evans: Lots more holidays! 

***

Artist Spotlight | Pt 2 : Virginia Rieley

Studio IX: Who are you?

Virginia Rieley: Virginia Rieley. Artist, writer, lifelong Charlottesville resident.

Studio IX: What type of artist are you? What medium/s do you work in?

Rieley: In recent years I have been working as a mixed media collage artist, using a combination of original photography, watercolor, pen & ink.

Studio IX: How do you approach your work?

Rieley: My goal is to capture everyday beauty in both iconic, recognizable scenes as well as the hidden, lesser known ones.

Studio IX: What is your process?

Rieley: The first step is taking the photographs, which usually happens on long walks around Charlottesville and the surrounding areas. I usually paint the skies in watercolor, then I cut out my photographs and impose the buildings and landscapes over top of these paintings. Sometimes I fill in small details like power lines using an ink pen.  Also, I worked as a framer for many years, so I like to incorporate the frame as part of the collage as a whole, often covering the frames in colorful  handmade paper.

Studio IX: What inspires you?

Rieley: The abundance of beauty in the everyday. Flowers, trees, the changing seasons, architecture, cityscapes. Everything!

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: GUIMING XIAO

Studio IX:             Good morning, Guiming.

Guiming: Good morning.

Studio IX: So we typically kick things off with an easy one.

Studio IX: What did you have for breakfast?

Guiming:             I had Bodo's bagels. Normally it's nothing, and I just have coffee but today I had breakfast with some friends. So this is a 5% breakfast rate and today happened to be one of that 5%

Studio IX:              Are you an early riser?

Guiming:              Today was also unusual in that regard. I got up at 7:00, to have breakfast at 7:15. Normally, it's probably 8:00. Then I get here (Studio IX) at 9:00.

Studio IX:              So tell us who you are and what it is you do.

Guiming:              Yeah. My name is Guiming Xiao. I graduated in 2012 and moved to Charlottesville right after. I did a program called the Fellows Program where I interned at Trinity Presbyterian church here in Charlottesville for a year and really fell in love with the area. I really like the culture and the geography of this area along with the big-small town vibe. I randomly joined a marketing startup called RKG to stay in the area after the program ended and now, 6 years later, I work remotely for New Engen, another startup in Seattle. New Engen is more software and consulting focused than my previous company but both are in the same field

Studio IX:              What's your exact title?

Guiming:              So I'm tasked with building a new capability right now, so it's honestly ambiguous and can change every 6 months based on how we grow. Right now, would say something ambiguous like Strategy Lead or Strategy Manager. Maybe Manager of Client Strategy. It'll be different probably by the time you post this.

Studio IX:             What are you passionate about?

Guiming:              I am passionate about a lot of things.

Studio IX:              Do tell.

Guiming:             I really love the church I go to-it’s a very important place for me and a very important community in my life where I feel unconditionally accepted and loved. I enjoy listening to music and playing music. I have also dabbled a little bit in writing music and playing, but not in any kind of serious capacity—mostly just a hobby enthusiast. I love playing golf, playing volleyball, and generally being active.

Studio IX:              Yeah.

Guiming:              I do also like Charlottesville a lot – I think it’s a special place.

Studio IX:              Do your passions play a part in your work?

Guiming:              I think somewhat. A big part of my role is helping with sales and marketing. Some company needs help with some problem and I get to come in and help them reimagine what they have and their current way that they're solving it, whether it's how they're physically executing their campaigns or imagining them. I then get to help bring to life New Engen’s vision for how to solve that problem. I generally enjoy mixing tasks that are creative and analytic. And so I get to do that more. I think I’ve enjoyed being able to make visual to bring New Engen’s vision to life as well as generally creating something that's visual. I do some of that. Otherwise, I’d say largely no on the specific hobbies. Golf is almost entirely unrelated to work, writing music's unrelated to work at all, same thing with anything active.

Studio IX:              What do you enjoy most about the work?

Guiming:              I enjoy that it's new. I'm a very curious but also scattered person. What that means is, though I was an econ major in college, I really did not want to do something where I joined a really established giant company with a really clearly defined ladder that you climb and a very predetermined methodology of how to accomplish whatever they're doing. I love the digital marketing space because it's entirely new and no one has any perfect answers for solving most of the problems. So it's a true playground in that sense. I like the creativity that is both the new problem solving as well as in marketing in general. I love helping solve problems and investigating things that have no blueprint.

Studio IX:              Yeah. That makes sense to me too.

Studio IX: What's the best mistake you've ever made?

Guiming:              Hard to say. One time I accidentally overspent a client's budget. This was when I first started in this field, so I was first time managing an account. I spent way too much money for them on accident out of just a pure execution error. What I learned in it was, if you're in a services industry, a professional services industry, people value you and your work more than they value the specific results much of the time. The client was of course upset when this happened, but also was okay with it as long as we created a solution for preventing the error in the future. I also got a real live example that when you make a mistake, its important to own up to it, to the client and that ultimately, the truth of whatever happened is the truth.

Studio IX:              What's a good day look like?

Guiming:              I would say that it is a full day that is also not too full that I have to do anything outside of normal hours. So a good day is, maybe I have a client meeting in the middle of the day. I prep for it. I put in the prerequisite work, it goes well and then I get to leave at 5:00 and go home. I think it's a great day because I think well-run client meetings come from a lot of preparation. And so if you prepare well, you’ll have run through the presentation many times, and you'll really be on the top of your game come live presentation time. I firmly believe you can get a lot done in normal hours and add a lot of value as long as you plan and are efficient with your time. On the flip side, I think a bad day would be a day that's both not full and there's a lot of meetings or something that I have to do outside of hours because we didn't prepare well. Sometimes that happens and there really wasn’t anything we could do to prevent it, but I find that most of the time there was simply better time management or more effective communication/planning that could have prevented it.

Studio IX:             Do you have a memorable story you could share? A turning point? A light switch moment.

Guiming:             Light switch moment. It's hard to say. We are, background on us, 210 people now. We were fifty people two years ago. I joined a year and a half ago and it was in the low hundreds. So it feels like every day there's a turning point where something clearly pivots.

Studio IX:              What's an aspect of your work that might surprise people to know?

Guiming:             I feel with the territory of working for a marketing startup in Seattle, people expect everything to be super techy and data science from there. What surprises my friends a little is that most of my work is actually pretty creatively oriented and very relationally focused. I will say my grandparents are generally surprised that I manage people, but that’s because a part of their mind still thinks I’m a cute grandchild

Studio IX:             Where do you see yourself & New Engen in the next five to ten years?

Guiming:             It's like this is a really fun experience job. I would imagine that I would probably try to not do a remote startup thing again just because it's a really big strain on travel end and then weird hours sometimes. I would imagine company-wise, we’ll be acquired at some point in the next 5-10 years. Once that happens, I think I'd love to pivot from being in the professional services/vendor space and more on the client side. In the sense that right now my job has really helped lots of people with whatever their problems are & I'd love to just find a product or a company mission that I really care for and to be directly involved, basically choosing as opposed to whoever comes in the door. I could also see myself doing something completely unrelated and random.

Studio IX:              Let’s jump back to storytelling for a moment.

Guiming:              Yeah.

Studio IX:              It’s obviously is a big part of marketing, but what does that look like? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to create a world around something that people can drop into?

Guiming:              Yeah. You have digital marketing specifically, which is our focus. I think the name of the game is, there's just a complex set of things out there that no one really understands all of. First I think you're inevitably storytelling for a marketing team at the enterprise level, if you work for a vendor as I do. So we're talking to companies that spend a large amount of money and with their teams the story you tell has to captivate a wide range of people and invigorate them and get them to go and make progress. So it's their plan that you are putting in place.

Guiming:             So you'll put a plan in place that tells a high level story for the CMO. But you also have to talk to someone about the details of how we're going to reach each of the individual channels like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Pinterest, whatnot. And then there's also going to be a tech person. So you have to weave all that together into a clean 50 slide or under deck in an hour and a half.

Studio IX:             Wait, what did you just say?

Guiming:             Deck.

Studio IX:             A fifty slide or under deck?

Guiming:             Fifty slide deck.

Studio IX:           What is that?

Guiming:             A deck is a euphemism for a PowerPoint presentation.

Studio IX:              Got it.

Guiming:              Like a deck of cards.

Studio IX:             Yep.

Guiming:             And so it's fun because really what it is, imagine if you were describing to someone how you build a house for them or plan their wedding. There's a lot of details and ultimately the details are what can get in the way, but the best wedding planners are going to be people who really get to know the people they're working for. And then it’s how they communicate, how they tell the story of what's happening on this day, how they even take the vision and they cater to it really well. And it’s the same thing for us. That's also what we do. Figuring out what all of the personalities care about and how to make them feel heard? What gives them value and then pulling that together into a story.

Studio IX:             Last question - What do you enjoy about being here at Studio IX?

Guiming:             So we have an office in New York now that has its own dedicated space but used to be in a co-working space and honestly that space, along with most spaces, feel very cramped or soulless. I think Studio IX on the other hand is very vibrant and definitely creates a collaborative environment. Theres a “we are here together all trying to be creative and add something in the world” vibe that isn't well executed in most co-working spaces, at least the ones I’ve been to in other places. I love the art on the walls and I love that it changes, that you can see a variety of work all the time. I think the space itself in terms of the physical architecture is beautiful and then there’s always a variety of people walking around that makes it feel like there is somewhat of a community in this area, which I like.

Studio IX:              Yeah.

Guiming:             Good coffee that Greg makes. Great coffee.

Studio IX:             I wish I could take credit for the blend, but Virginia (Milli Roasters) did it.

Studio IX: That's it!

Guiming:            That's it?

Studio IX:            Yeah. Thank you.

Guiming:             Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: HENRY BORGESON

Studio IX:             Hey, Henry!

Henry:                  Good morning.

Studio IX:             Ok, let’s jump to it. How about an easy one to start? What did you have for breakfast?

Henry:                   I had peanut butter toast with a banana.

Studio IX:             That's good. I didn't have any breakfast.

Henry:                   You're eating a muffin right now.

Studio IX:            It's about to go in. (laughter)

Henry:                   But yeah, peanut butter toast almost every day.

Studio IX:            Chunky or smooth?

Henry:                   Smooth.

Studio IX:             Yeah?

Henry:                    Yeah, smooth. Sometimes I like to get chunky.

Studio IX:            Really? You switch it up?

Henry:                     Maybe 5% of the time, I'll do chunky.

Studio IX:             Yeah?

Henry:                   95% of the time I'll do smooth. You don't appreciate the smooth without the chunky.

Studio IX:            Surely there’s a gem of business wisdom in that comment. (laughter)

Henry:                  Yeah.

Studio IX:             So next question. Who are you?

Henry:                    Who am I?

Studio IX:             ... And what do you do?

Henry:                    Okay. I’m Henry Borgeson. I’m the President and CFO of Roots Natural Kitchen.

Studio IX:            Could you share a bit about what that entails?

Henry:                     I'll speak to the CFO piece first.

That's really just making sure there's money in the bank account and making sure everyone understands how it got there. I think a lot of people like to dress up and imagine that finance is going out, finding big bags of money, and stashing them somewhere. Really it's just that everyone needs to know what the operation did in financial terms, and I try to make sure that happens. Then as we go forward, make sure we have the money we need to continue to do what we want to do.

Then on the president side, that role is new, but it almost exists in a similar vein. It’s holding us accountable to the promises we make to our people.

Often times I think any failure in an organization really comes down to mismanaged expectations. People think you're doing one thing when you're doing something else. Making sure everyone is in a lane where they can succeed and thrive, and they feel good about what they're expected to do, and what they're expected to accomplish – that’s what’s meant to be represented in the role of the President. It's that presence that is supposed to help make sure that happens within the organization. And I take that quite seriously and I enjoy it a great deal.

Studio IX:             Have you been around from the inception of the business? When did Roots start?

Henry:                     So, Roots Natural Kitchen started in 2015, Albert and Alvaro, our two co-founders went to UVA and they had the idea, a simple idea really, there's no place to get healthy food on the corner. Albert, in particular, he gets itches, sees something and thinks, "I need to solve that problem." So, that was the one itch that he had to scratch. He needed to put that restaurant on the corner. And it's grown from there. I knew both of them at UVA and they reached out to me.

Studio IX:                 You were at Darden?

Henry:                     UVA undergrad.

Studio IX:                 Oh, okay.

Henry:                    McIntire, the Undergrad Business School at UVA. Albert and Alvaro reached out to me about three years ago now. Then they slowly roped me in, and my role has grown from there.

Studio IX:                 What are you passionate about?

Henry:                      What am I passionate about?

Studio IX:                 And that's not exclusive to just Roots or your career.

Henry:                     I do find that most of my brain power is committed to the role within Roots. But everything I'm doing within Roots really does resonate with what I'm passionate about. I feel kind of silly saying this because I am rather young, but I'm very passionate about what I alluded to within the context of the president role. I'm very passionate about helping people get to places where they feel like they can succeed. Something that I find very disappointing is that when you survey Americans, over 50% of them say they are dissatisfied or unhappy with their job. That’s very disappointing.

Henry:                          We're supposed to be the pinnacle of society. We're better off than we've ever been before in economic terms, yet people who are going out to work, over half of them say they don't enjoy it. I think that's a failure. Most people look to their place of work to be a community. I am passionate about making sure Roots can be that community, and making sure people feel like Roots is really a place where we say, "Yes, you can go out and do that thing. You've identified a challenge within our organization that you want to take on. I want to help you do that, and make sure you feel good about taking that on." I think that approach has really helped us over time.

A lot of our managers in the stores are people who started on the line, or in the dish room, and have worked themselves up to General Manager roles. That's awesome. Taking on challenges within the context of the restaurant, developing into leaders. One of our corporate team members, Hannah for example, she started in the restaurant as well, then started processing payroll, and has worked into her Director of Employee Experience role. It excites me to help people get to places that they feel good about what they're accomplishing.

Studio IX:                    I think you've kind of answered this, but what do you enjoy most about the work? What gets you up in the morning to make your peanut butter toast?

Henry:                          What do I enjoy most? The chance to be with all the people I'm with every day. In the context of Roots, I very much feel like we're all working in the same direction. Being around people who are working in the same direction, who believe in the outcome we’re striving for - many restaurants that help empower people through natural food. Just being around people who want to do that is inspiring. And being around the good things that spin off that is inspiring. Being with people who feel good about the same mission is rewarding. So I get up because I get to be a part of it.

Studio IX:                Yeah, I feel that with you guys. Absolutely. That's pretty amazing. I’m just inventing this question in the moment, but what does a great day look like?

Henry:                          I get up pretty early. Around 5:00 AM. A great day is an eight-mile run, good breakfast, peanut butter toast, two fried eggs. That's a great morning. I like to spend three to four hours by myself in the morning. That's my introverted time.

Studio IX:                I can relate.

Henry:                          I don't know exactly what a great day within work looks like, but it's one where everything feels like it's clicking. Whether it's working with external vendors, external investors, our accounting team, our HR team - it's being able to feel like we're making progress in the right direction. Not like we're slogging through the day, but that we're actually setting ourselves up to succeed today, and for the next week, the next month, the next year. So, as long as there's positivity in those conversations, that feels good.

Then getting home and still having the chance to make dinner. I like to cook. Usually with no recipe, just with whatever's in the fridge. So as long as there are enough vegetables in the fridge to cook, that gives me a moment to be creative in the kitchen. That’s good too.

Studio IX:               Yeah. All I've got right now is roasted potatoes. It's pretty bad. I need to get to the store.

Studio IX:            Could you share a memorable story? A turning point for you? It could be part of your experience with Roots, or just be your own life and work. Something that really mattered. For instance, was there a moment when you guys were like, "Oh shit!"?

Henry:                     I'm almost always supposed to be the voice in the room that isn't reacting that way. So I end up staying very level.

Studio IX:           The pragmatist?

Henry:                The pragmatist. But when we were opening up Penn State this summer, it was awesome to see the first line. There were six construction workers in line, ready to eat our food in State College. This was the first restaurant that I had the chance to be a part of from start to finish. There was a point in time when we didn't know if we were going to be able to even open that restaurant. I love seeing people that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be eating our food. Not saying construction workers can’t eat our food, but often times there are these moments when it's validated that we're serving food that everyone really can enjoy. And to see that in a place that we thought we might not be able to pull it off.

Henry:                     And then seeing Albert walking around the store, looking at everything.

Studio IX:            People reading this cannot see what you just did. But you just did a perfect impersonation of Albert. (Laughter)

Henry:                     That Penn State restaurant open, was really one that represented us turning a corner, being able to do that.  A big moment from when we first embarked on growing from two restaurants. The first one was in Charlottesville, the second one was in Newark, Delaware. Then we took on this very ambitious growth plan where we were going to try to open one in Austin, Texas, one in State College, one in Richmond, and one in Pittsburgh. To try to go from what was really two small businesses to a company of six integrated restaurants, it was too much. So Austin, we had to let that one go. And then we thought we might have to let Penn State go, too. But we hunkered down, secured the financing.

Peter joining our team was instrumental in making sure we could pull off building the restaurants, and organize in a way that would allow future growth. Penn State was almost like the flag on the moon.  "Yes, we can plan for growth. We can manage restaurants." So, that day was special to me. I woke up quite early and went on a run around State College, and then when we went and opened up at 10:30 and people started lining up, it was like, "We can do this whole thing. And we should do this thing, we should do it many times over." That was a good one.

Studio IX:             A great lead in to my next question. What's the five to ten year view look like? What do you see for yourself and also for Roots?

Henry:                     I think people often imagine that there is this moment when the work is finished. But there's always work to be done. Really, as you grow, there are many more roles to be developed, and there are many more people that you need to teach to be part of it, and you need to reshape the organization many times over. It will continuously look different as we go, as there are more restaurants, there are more people supporting those restaurants, and more specialized roles that need help coming into the organization.

It's never about finding the stuff you need to get done and throwing it on someone else's plate, it's about finding the pathways to create jobs that people will want to do. That will always be a challenge, whether you have one restaurant, and you're trying to figure out what the jobs are in the store, or you have hundreds of restaurants. Those are similar organizational challenges. I don't really think very well in terms of a long-term vision, like one day we will have a thousand restaurants. What I more so think about is doing the right things today, over the next year, over the next two years, that will potentially lead us down a pathway where that is possible.

So in the next year, we plan to open five more in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Solidify the brand here in the Mid-Atlantic. Develop our off-premise sales channels. We have a great in-store model, people lining up outside the door to get food in the restaurant. But we’re also working on ways to bring food to people, dropping off food at office buildings through Hotspots, executing a catering business, executing third-party delivery through partners like Uber Eats. We’re developing an integrated, multi-channel approach to getting people food. Developing that over the next year, the next 18 months, and solidifying our presence in Virginia and Pennsylvania. That will give us the opportunity to think about expanding further. Everything about what we've done thus far feels positive. So anything working towards continuing to expand feels positive.

Studio IX:            What's an aspect of the work you do that people might be surprised to know?

Henry:                     So we only have a two person finance team. So it’s me and Laura, who joined us in February, who has been an absolute joy to work with. I can't really express how thankful I am for her joining our team, and everything she's done. But it's still only two of us. That's pretty lean from a people working in finance standpoint. So I still end up handling a lot of what I would consider to be entry level finance roles. I end up paying a lot of bills still. Which eventually, as the CFO, you’d hope I’ve managed things in a way where we have other people taking care of that responsibility. But it's something that's still on my plate, just within the context of how we've developed.

But I have so much fun being an accounts payable accountant. I love calling accounts receivable coordinators on the phone. Most people that I call, they expect it to be a frustrating conversation. I love to get them to diverge and have a conversation about their day. So something that people don't know is, I have wonderful relationships with random accounts receivable clerks. Really all over the Mid-Atlantic. There's Jean from Monteverde’s in Pittsburgh, we have an email exchange every Friday.

There’s Dale from Kegel’s in State College & Delaware. No one really knows that I have these great pen pal relationships with accounts receivables clerks. They're wonderful.

I think that's something I almost try to instill in all the things we do with external vendors. They're part of the Roots community, too. If they feel good about the work they’re doing, that makes everything run more smoothly. So just going out of the way to develop those relationships, just a step further, to make sure everyone really is enjoying the work that they're doing. It's fun. So I still get to do that with some of the more day-to-day accounting and finance roles. I really do enjoy doing those things well.

Studio IX:            That's great. Last question is what do you enjoy about working here at Studio IX?

Henry:                     So we got our first office, it was actually this time last year. It's been a year. We were working all over the place, working remote, with some space in the back of our second Charlottesville location. And me and Hannah were looking for a space to work in, and we walked in here and it was just, "This is it! This is where we need to be." I don't know, I think it's a combination of everything in the studio, it just feels right. To me it strikes me that everyone working here is aligned with that feeling of, you should enjoy what you do and it shouldn't just be about the work

It's a co-working space. So I think the first thing you think is that people go there to work, which is true, but why I feel great about Studio IX is that it's a little bit more than that.

I think that’s really true with all work - yes it's good to be productive, it's good to get things done, but there's always a little bit more than that. So maybe it's having an art gallery, where you work, that feels right. Having great music playing throughout the day, all over the space, that feels right. Having people around who you can stop and have a nice conversation with about what they do. That feels right. Good coffee. That feels right.

For me personally, I spend most of my day trying to figure out how to be as productive as possible. I like being in a space that makes me pause and reflect. We can still enjoy the moment when we’re working. As long as you're pausing to reflect that you can be enjoying that moment. That's a good thing. I think Studio IX does that well.

Studio IX:             Boom! That’s it!

Henry:                 Times up?

Studio IX:             Yeah. You nailed it.

Henry: Yeah?

Studio IX:            Yeah.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: PHILLIP PEGELOW

Studio IX:                                          First question-

Phillip Pegelow:                       Yeah.

Studio IX:                                        ...what'd you have for breakfast?

Phillip Pegelow:                        I didn't eat breakfast this morning.

Studio IX:                                         What do you typically have for breakfast?

Phillip Pegelow:                       Depending on how much time I do, or do not have. I have either two eggs, over easy and a piece of toast. Or cereal and milk.

Studio IX:                                         You like the yolks, the runny yolks?

Phillip Pegelow:                       I do. I'm into the runny yolks.

Studio IX:                                           Me, too. I'm a fan.

Phillip Pegelow:                        If my wife is off, sometimes she adds hash browns to the mix-

Studio IX:                                           Aww.

Phillip Pegelow:                      ...and it's a special morning, when that happens.

Studio IX:                                            That's great.

Phillip Pegelow:                        Yeah, and lots of coffee.

Studio IX:                                         Yeah, lots of coffee. Constantly, coffee.

Studio IX:                                           All right, so our listeners know, who are you and what do you do?

Phillip Pegelow:                        I'm Phillip Pegelow:. What I do is, I work for a digital marketing company, based in Seattle, called New Engen. Our mission is to help marketers more effectively advertise their products or product.

Studio IX:                                  So this could be related or totally separate, but what are you passionate about?

Phillip Pegelow:                        To the extent that it relates, I'm passionate about software engineering. I like building things. I like to see how things work. It can take many forms. It's taken different forms over the years.

It's been beer brewing, at some point. Not just focused on creating the perfect beer, but creating systems and things that make the process of brewing beer different, or more precise. I work on my vehicles at home and friends' vehicles. Basic maintenance and things like that.

Then sometimes, getting in too deep, and doing more stuff. I enjoy that. How can you design and build systems to solve problems? That's how I ended up where I am. I think segwaying that into the realm of what's true, or what's good and beautiful.

I think we're all kind of on our own quests, to understand the world and how it works, and where meaning is found in it. That has been through faith, specifically Christian faith, so I'm really involved in church kind of community, on that quest, or that journey, to understand what is true and meaningful. Most people agree that the answer to that question revolves around this word “love”.

Studio IX:                                           Yes.

Phillip Pegelow:                        So the Christian faith is kind of where I've found that to be most revealed, in my own life, so yeah.

Studio IX:                                        What do you enjoy most about the work that you do for New Engen?

Phillip Pegelow:                        I work closely with two guys, here. We compose an engineering team, and I enjoy working closely with them. Just imagine with me, a culture where the company presents us with a particular problem, or design for a feature. It's this cool process from designing a solution to it, to coding it out, to testing it, validating that it'll meet all of the requirements that it needs to meet, and finally delivering it. And deploying it, in the form of a server, somewhere in the cloud.

That process is really enjoyable to me. I like sitting down with them. I think the culture that we've kind of organically grown there, has been really sweet and enjoyable. To talk through different solutions, working together to identify what's going to be most effective. What's going to be easiest to deliver? What's going to be, kind of taking into account all these different factors, being on this journey together to find a solution.

There's also an individual component where you're head down in your code, solving the problem, or executing the plan that you've collaborated to come up with. Every step along the way, checking in. It's a unique environment that not every programming shop has, but that we found works really well for us.

I think it's a little bit more human, than maybe a lot of other places might practice, so. Just being able to have that community aspect. I wouldn't necessarily say it's like, we did that in the name of efficiency or to increase productivity, by any means. But it does happen to have that effect, as well, despite maybe it being a little counterintuitive.

Studio IX:                   Was that a deliberate choice, or just an extension of your personalities and values, or both?

Phillip Pegelow:                       Yeah, it's both. It's kind of organically grown from that.

Studio IX:                                   How old is New Engen?

Phillip Pegelow:                       Our company is a little over two years.

Studio IX:                                     Exciting.

Phillip Pegelow:                      Yeah.

Studio IX:                                        Is there a memorable story that stands out to you?

Studio IX:                                        It could be with the history of the company, it could be within the history of your work, your own personal path, a turning point?

Phillip Pegelow:                        Let's think about that...(long pause)

Studio IX:                                        Can I ask you another question?

Phillip Pegelow:                        Yes another question.

Studio IX:                                          We’ll return to that one?

Phillip Pegelow:                     Great.

Studio IX:                               How about an aspect of what you do that might surprise people to know?

Phillip Pegelow:                        I don't know that there's any particular surprise with our business. I've worked at other marketing companies, where maybe some people would be surprised to hear certain things that we did.

Maybe the biggest thing people would be surprised to hear is that New Engen is a robust company. We have a startup mindset, that's where our roots are. A lot of companies have that as well. What comes along with that, is kind of a scrappy mentality. In terms of how you get things done. Just quick, all hands on deck, scrambles to resolve particular issues, to prevent impacting clients, and things like that.

By in large, we have incredibly smart people that can resolve pretty much any issue that could ever arise. We've made an intentional choice to design systems in such a way that our people can intervene when they need to, instead of over engineering. Integrity checks, and things like that have been a key to fast growth, but it's probably something that will transition overtime.

Studio IX:                                          How did it start? How did the company start?

Phillip Pegelow:                        The company has its roots in New Zealand. One of the early online retail shops. The founders of New Engen had reduced that world to a science, applied data-driven principles to budgeting and managing our advertising accounts. Some of the principles they developed there have been a key to our success in this retail world, and there doesn't appear to be solutions like it on the market. Like why can't we solve this same problem that we solved for Zulily for all retail corporations that are out there, for all the varying marketing companies that exist.

So that's exactly what they set out to do. They started developing software that made that process more optimized and easier. As you're probably aware, there's so many different advertising channels that come and go, on the day to day basis. Being able to apply all those principles across many different channels has been really valuable.

Phillip Pegelow:                       Seattle is where the bulk of our company is based.

Studio IX:                                   Where do you see yourself and the company in five to ten years?

Phillip Pegelow:                        From my experience, a little over a year ago, we were half the size that we are now. And we're continuing that growth trajectory. Feels like we've still been getting a recognizable client name, and growing all the time. We're becoming self funding. That's our goal by the end of the year. Over time, I anticipate us to dramatically grow in size. I think one of the tough parts of starting a business, especially in digital marketing, is it's really hard to import experience, because it's a relatively new field.

That's where and Nate has come in. We have really unique backgrounds in digital marketing, but you're starting out and you're getting people in different client accounts. You have to grow them, and that takes time. You really are limited in how quickly you can grow your knowledge base. I think New Engen has struck a good balance, between hiring what they've needed to and growing what they're able to. They also take a more conservative approach to growth than most startups do. In that they grow carefully, instead of throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. Just being able to prevent some of the more volatile aspects of growing a startup has a been a key in remaining successful in the marketplace. Our world also requires a degree of stability all the way through the business, that maybe other startups don't require. Startups that are managing all these fortune 500 companies, advertising assets has a little more luxury of being wildly optimistic.

Studio IX:                                           Yeah. It sounds like relationships are pretty important to you guys.

Phillip Pegelow:                        Yeah, for sure.

Phillip Pegelow:                        When I started, they have these small scale training opportunities, maybe once a month. In terms of how leadership approaches and communicates with the people that work there, they're just present, available, and quick to come by or see how things are going and chat. Sometimes it's about the work, and sometimes it's not, and they're always interested in both aspects of it, the people and the work. Our people are by far the biggest asset, and it's prioritized accordingly.

Studio IX:                                          Smart.

Studio IX:                                          So let’s talk about Studio IX for a moment. What do you enjoy most about being here?

Phillip Pegelow:                      Well there's people that do similar work to us, so it's been interesting to connect, and see what other people are doing in the same world. There's people that do things that are completely different from us, so that's been really cool to connect with them, and see things that people are doing that I never thought of.

There's a degree of synergy around here that makes working so much better than working in a regular office environment. In my opinion, that’s because everybody's not doing the same thing. You have very different people, from different backgrounds, and it creates an atmosphere that's unique in this world of corporate America. It makes it a lot easier to come into work and be able to work in that kind of an atmosphere.

Studio IX:                                         Last question-

Phillip Pegelow:                       Yeah.

Studio IX:                                            What's the story behind the coffee mug? (laughter)

Phillip Pegelow:                      Story behind my coffee mug, I don't really know, honestly. My coffee mug is this guy, he's hunting, and all the wildlife in the world is around him. But he's asleep, gun in his hand, at his stand.

Studio IX:                                            And what is this sign on the tree say?

Phillip Pegelow:                        It says “Stand #13”, so he must have his stands marked out. It's probably from like, I don't know, 1998. There's your answer.

Studio IX:                                        I love it.

Phillip Pegelow:                       But yeah, I don't know.

Studio IX:                                         It's just a mug.

Phillip Pegelow:                       It's just a mug.

Studio IX:                                          That's it, Big Man.

Phillip Pegelow:                     Cool.

Studio IX:                                          Thank you.

Phillip Pegelow:                        Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: HANNAH CORBIN

Studio IX : What’d you have for breakfast?

Hannah: I actually haven’t eaten yet. I thought I was gonna be late, so I got over here as fast as I could. But I did find, I think, some egg on my shirt this morning. I think that’s what it was, egg.

Studio IX: Hmm. (laughter)

H: I do have egg packed in my lunch. It could be that.

Studio IX: There’s evidence of egg.

 H: There is evidence of egg.

 Studio IX: Okay. First real question. Who are you, and what do you do?

H: Who am I, and what do I do? I’ve always considered myself a listener and a people watcher, and I think those two identities work in tandem. I’ve been fascinated by other people for as long as I can remember. In fact, I’ve probably been more interested in other people’s lives than in my own. But sometimes it’s stifling being the “observer,” rather than the “participant,” so I’ve worked in recent years to be more of the “participant.” I have a lot of things I want to do in my life. Even still, I love being quiet—just kind off doing my own thing and figuring out how I think about the world. There’s a balance there somewhere.

As for what I do, I’d say that I serve people, and I try to do it with a good attitude.

Studio IX: What is your actual title, and who do you work for?

H: I’m the Director of Employee Experience at Roots Natural Kitchen. I get a pulse on how our people are doing, how they’re engaging with their peers, their managers, and their work, and figure out how to improve their experience—before, during, and after their time at Roots. The goal is to make this the most fun, fulfilling, and empowering place to be, and be from.

 In short, my work is figuring out what it is we’re promising our people, and how we plan to deliver on that promise throughout the course of employees’ careers.

Studio IX: Awesome.

H: Yeah, it is.

Studio IX: Well, I’ll just ask it—you may have answered it, but what are you passionate about?

H: I’m really passionate about food and our relationship to it—including all the emotional, physical, cultural, political, and environmental ties to what we eat. I think I’m angsty, or let’s say, convicted, at my core, because I find a lot of injustices in the world, particularly in the food industry, and I feel a deep-rooted personal responsibility to right them.  

In college, I used to joke, though mostly seriously, that I was a poet and a “muckraker,” which was a term coined to describe the investigative journalists who exposed the evils of leaders, corporations, and political systems around the turn of the 20th century. Think people like Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle, and revolutionized American food safety with his words. It’s a lovely thought: these “muckrakers” digging up crap and exposing it. Bringing it out into the light, out into the open, to get some fresh air. So I would say that I was, and still am, a poet and a muckraker, because I believe that you can dig up truth and illuminate it in such a way that it is useful, invigorating, and beautiful.

I’m also drawn to healing, all kinds of healing. I think any profession can be a “healing profession” if you approach your work, and your people, with care, thought, and a sincere desire for wholeness and restoration.

 And I’m passionate about people. I’ve heard it said that loving others is the most creative thing we could ever do. I’ll add that I also think it’s the hardest, and the most worthwhile.

Studio IX: I feel that—

H: Yeah.

Studio IX: Does this play a part in your work?

H: For sure it does. Right now, I’m uniquely positioned to advocate for people. Something that I love about Roots is that we offer opportunity—a fresh start for a lot of people in this industry. I, or really, we as a collective company, are able to put under the microscope most jobs in the service industry and say, How can we make this work better, more humane and worthwhile, for our people? So in that sense, I’m taking the injustices that I see and doing what I can to right them, to offer people enriching work and translatable life skills. I often say that I feel experientially “rich,” especially at Roots, and I want others to feel the same. I want to make a tangible difference. One that others can hear, see, and touch.

Studio IX: Yeah. What do you enjoy most about work?

H: Word on the street is that this is everyone’s favorite aspect of work—but of course, the people. My coworkers are creative and wildly entertaining to work alongside. They play with words, and ideas, and norms, and to me this is the most fun. Being a somewhat recent college grad, I thought I was going to miss school, but this past year, I’ve found that my curiosity, my need for intellectual stimulation, is met in our corporate office. My mind has been changed and twisted and teased countless times—it’s been cool to have the boundaries of my brain just stretch. Not only have I gleaned a lot of professional experience in this role, but a lot of cognitive and relational experience as well. I really love that.

Studio IX: I mean, that’s a good segue to jump off the regular kind of scheduled programming and just talk about the show for a minute. So you have an exhibit here at Studio IX, in the gallery in September.

Can you talk a bit about it?

H: Yeah. It’s funny, because when I was talking to you earlier, I mentioned that this gallery exhibit was not the way I thought I was going to be “published.” This whole project started because one of our co-founders, Alberto, wrote an email one day—and the thing you gotta know about him is that he is very direct and succinct in his writing—and I was so struck by the cadence of his words. I don’t know if he intended his email to be that way, but it rhymed, and overall had the right tempo. I thought it was brilliant. So I wrote it down and played with the spacing and the line structure, and I was like, Shoot, this is poetry.

After that, I kept my ears perked. I started recording more and more quotes from my coworkers, and playing with them, thinking, “Oh, if I work with them, shape them this way and break down the words that way, I can recreate the experience of hearing them for the first time.” I started identifying as a scribe, a preserver of our open-office culture. You think of ancient cultures that tell their stories on wax paper and stone tablets—I happen to tell ours electronically. I had everything written down on a word doc. Like any other scribe worth his salt, I felt compelled to remember, and at some point, pass along, these conversations and comebacks. Each poem, then, encapsulates a very specific creative moment.

But the thing is, even in their specificity, these poems are broad enough where you can read them, relate to them, and think, “Oh, I see where you’re coming from with that.” Or, “You know, I’ve been there. I resonate with that.” That’s powerful.

Studio IX: Yes.

Studio IX: Could you share a memorable story?

H: Memorable story. hmm—?

Studio IX: If we take your writing, your love of the word, your love of people, your work with Roots—is there a memorable story that comes to mind?

H: I feel like there are a lot of memorable stories.

Studio IX: Something that stands out to you.

H: Let me think on it. I’ve been with Roots now for three and a half years, and for two plus of those years I worked in restaurant operations. Anytime you deal directly with the public, you get a lot of good stories. I’ll have to circle back on that.

Greg: What’s an aspect of what you do that people might be surprised to know about your job?

H: Hmmm. I’m on hold a lot.

Now I don’t mean that to sound diminutive. I work on a several “big picture” projects, and I love it when people say they’re different because of Roots. But a lot of times, I’m responding to emails, waiting on hold, doing “little” things well. Because when you pull back the curtain, you find that the little things are actually the big things, the world-changing things, if you do them proficiently and consistently. So I do my best to approach the little things with the same sense of faithfulness, and reverence, and joy, that I do the big things. I’ve gleaned a lot of this wisdom from my coworker Henry, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience it, and make sense of it, in my own way.

Studio IX: Well said, Han’

Studio IX: Any sense of where you’re headed, where Roots is headed?

What’s in the future for the company, or for your role in it?

H: In 2015, as you know, we opened the doors of our flagship location here on the Corner—and since then, we’ve opened five more restaurants. So we’ve grown quite rapidly in the first few years of business. I know the plan from a strategic perspective is to continue that growth. In 2020, we’ll have several new locations opening, and obviously, with more growth comes more opportunity.

Going forward, my role will look slightly different, in that I’ll be hiring, and working closely with, somebody new to ensure that the more technical tasks of my current role, including compliance, payroll, and benefits administration, are handled. All of us here wear a lot of hats, but for most of the time, the “humans” department is a one-woman department, so I’m thrilled to get some help in this area. I’m excited, also, to step into more of a managerial role, and work on my professional parenting skills, if you will. So my medium-term plans are to keep doing what I’m doing and then help our new humans department hire become acclimated.

Studio IX: Then, save the world.

H: Then, yes, save the world. Those are my long-term plans. (laughter)

Studio IX: What do you enjoy about being here in Studio Ix?

H: Something that drew me to Studio IX in the beginning was the atmosphere. I remember when we were touring office spaces, looking for our company’s new corporate home, I left Studio IX thinking, Yes, this is it. The space was so bright and warm, even in late October. For me, Studio IX was an aesthetic attraction and a gut sense.

Think of how you fall in love with a person. Maybe you’re attracted to someone because you’re a sucker for crow’s feet, but once you spend time with them, and you get to know them, you become enthralled with the other parts of them: the lines of their handwriting, the patience they have in traffic, the sun-burnt backs of their ears when you walk behind them.

That’s how it was with Studio IX. At first, I was drawn to the general appearance and atmosphere. But as I got to know the space, I found that I was drawn to its people, those I met by the printer and passed in the hall and learned by first name at the fridge making breakfast; drawn to its habits; drawn to the Van Morrison on Tuesday morning over tea; drawn its many Thursday happy hours. These characteristics and quirks come with a space once you spend time getting to know it. All of these things equally become it.

 And I don’t want to forget Sicily Rose, which, even after it no longer greets us here in the mornings, still has a home in my heart and my mind. The friendships I’ve formed with those at Sicily Rose, and the perspectives I’ve gained from having this place as a part of Studio IX, I consider not transitional, but pivotal, in my own personal development.

Studio IX: We’re honored to have you and the team here with us, Hannah.

Thank you.

H: Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: JONATHAN ELDRIDGE

Studio IX: Good morning, Jonathan.

Jonathan:             Good morning.

Studio IX:             So let’s break the ice. Tell us who you are and what it is you do.

Jonathan:            Yeah, I'm Jonathan Eldridge. I'm a product manager at a financial software company called SS&C technologies, which is a conglomerate of software. They purchased a bunch of companies, so my company was purchased three years ago by them. Previously, it was called Advent Software, based in San Francisco. It's the only job I've ever had, since out of college, so I've been there for 18 years.

Studio IX:             And what brought you to Charlottesville?

Jonathan:            Two kids.

Studio IX:             Gotcha.

Jonathan:              So I was in San Francisco and then New York and then once we had our second child in New York, in Brooklyn, our apartment became too small, and life became too tough. I knew the area (Charlottesville). My brother used to live here, but my best friend, and his family have since moved down here and I have some friends from college who live here as well. We had a good little circle of people trying to sell us on Charlottesville, once they heard we were wanting to move out of New York, pitching the Charlottesville dream. 

Studio IX:             Glad they did, it's good to have you here.

Jonathan:              Yeah.

Studio IX:             What are you passionate about? It could be work, could be life related, ..could dovetail.

Jonathan:             I'm pretty passionate about my job. I like working with my clients, with hedge funds and smart individuals that are overall pretty cool.

Jonathan:              I'm passionate about travel. We travel a lot. I travel a lot individually for work but then also as a family.

Studio IX:             Does that take you all over the world? Or is it mainly in the states?

Jonathan:              It’s primarily international. I go to Dublin every year. I went to Amsterdam this year. Munich previously. Hopefully Beijing later this year. But mainly Europe.

Studio IX:             Is Dublin personal or is that more work?

Jonathan:              All work.

Studio IX:             Cool.

Jonathan:              Personally we haven't decided to take the kids that far yet. My wife really wants to but I’m still hesitant on the overnight flight and timezone change.  They come with me to San Francisco a lot for visits to the office out there.

Studio IX:             San Fran’s a good spot.

Jonathan:              Yeah, it is.

Studio IX:             What do you enjoy most about your work?

Jonathan:             Helping other people do their jobs. We have a lot of developers and business analysts who understand how the product works as well as what the clients need. We have relationship managers to keep clients happy and make sure they're paying their bills. We have consultants that implement the products. And so I sit in the middle of all that trying to connect the dots and relay information.  I talk to clients as well.  My main responsibility is to figure out what we should build next. So what kind of crazy swap instrument or bond or whatever they're trading these days and how we can support that. And I just try to then figure out what we're going to build and then relay all that information and make sure everybody's connected on moving the product forward and keeping the clients up to date. That make sense?

Studio IX:             Yeah. I'm going to date myself here, but you're like Stockton to Malone.

Jonathan:             Yeah, yeah. A lot of assists. That's right. (Laughter)

Studio IX:             Can you share a memorable story from your work? Something that’s stood out to you, that might've been a turning point or just something that mattered.

Jonathan:              Let me think about that.

Jonathan:             Becoming a manager was eye opening. Being responsible for your team, for giving them paths to success so they can grow. It’s a big responsibility, especially for some younger team members that have so much potential. So allowing that potential to grow in areas that help the business and their career. And then, yeah, just making sure you're not holding them back and getting the most out of them and keep them happy and staying with the team. So it's a big responsibility and I kind of didn't quite think too much about that specifically before becoming a manager.

Studio IX:             How long have you been doing that?

Jonathan:              Managing? Probably the last five years. It's a small team, like four people.

Studio IX:             With that in mind, where do you see yourself in the next five to ten years? Where’s the industry's headed? Are things changing quickly or has it stayed relatively the same?

Jonathan:              For us, we've had legacy products. My product which is called Geneva has been 15 or 20 years now. It's gone through different evolutions like Java client, .Net client. So now the trend is everything moving into to the cloud, so we are moving to a web based UI (user interface). So that's a challenge, but also very exciting. 

Jonathan:              The other thing that we see as growth for us is we're building out teams in India to do manage services. So certain clients, like hedge funds want to go into new strategies like trading swaps or whatever it is, but they don't want to hire a big team to do all the reconciliation of the numbers and entering the trades and all that kind of day to day work that comes along with the strategy.  So we will provide them with a team that does that so they get to take the advantage of the new strategy that they're going after without having to onboard a bunch of people.

Studio IX:             Biggest shift from Brooklyn to here?

Jonathan:              As far as life changes, I mean, well, as a whole life is so much easier here. I do miss the food. We are getting used to it. The food is good here and I love the independent restaurants, but you know - you miss some of that. The biggest impact was moving here in the middle of all the craziness of 2017. We moved here in July and were still unpacking as all that went down.  There are still some things in the south that you just don't realize until you get here. But those specific events, we know that wasn't a product of Charlottesville, those were people from everywhere.

Studio IX:             It's been eye opening for a lot of people.

Jonathan:              Yeah. On the positive side, one of the biggest shifts is just for the kids. The pool scene here is incredible. Whether it's ACAC, Frye Springs, or the city pools. We're happy with the of ease of life, to do anything. Especially the kids. It's fantastic.

Studio IX:            Night and day.

Jonathan:              Yeah. Our biking commute is 10 minutes.

Studio IX:             Were you working in Manhattan?

Jonathan:              Yeah, yeah. Rode the subway to Bryant Park everyday.

Studio IX:             On that note — what do you enjoy most about being here at Studio IX?

Jonathan:              Well, I ended up having two friends that were already working here, Jed and Tiffany. So it was nice having some friendly faces that you could see. I think it's just a cool spot. It's got a cool coffee shop out front. I mean the IX area itself is just a great, unique location versus I guess what you would get in just renting out a stale office. I think you do a great job of bringing new things to try and get people together. Having that opportunity is good.

Jonathan:              And it's interesting, you hear these little conversations of people doing their job. Most people that do so many different things. You see the same people here for two years, which means they like it here too. It's not a constant turnover.

Studio IX:             Is this the first time you've co-worked?

Jonathan:              I've always been at an office, so yeah this is my first experience. 

Studio IX:             Beautiful. Well, — that's it.

Studio IX:             Painless.

Jonathan:            Yeah, it is painless. Way, way, way, way easier than going to the dentist.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: TOBIAS NOYES

Studio IX:                                All right. First thing's first. Who are you, and what do you do?

Tobias Noyes:                        My name is Tobias Noyes and I'm the founder of a small digital marketing and web development company called Renaissance Group.

Studio IX:                                And what does Renaissance Group do?

Tobias Noyes:                        We focus on two things. First, we design and code beautiful/intuitive websites. Second, we use a variety of digital marketing techniques, like search engine optimization, paid search, and Facebook ads to drive traffic to those sites.

Studio IX:                                Cool. We should get you working for us. (laughter)

Tobias Noyes:                       Okay, this is actually just a client meeting then.

Studio IX:                                Yeah. We're just recruiting, that's all we're doing. So, what are you passionate about?

Tobias Noyes:                        In regards to business, personal, or both?

Studio IX:                                Across the board.

Tobias Noyes:                        Interesting, that's a great question. The good thing about it being transcribed and not recorded is that it doesn't take in consideration pauses. I could pause for 10 minutes and think about it.

First and foremost, I'm a Christian, and so the number one priority in my life is glorifying Christ. I’m also passionate about family, community, personal growth, and ultimately making a positive impact, which is why I love entrepreneurship. When you work for yourself, you’re able to steer the ship. I do a fair bit of work with nonprofits as well as donate 10% of gross sales to philanthropic organization. I’m able to do these things because I don’t have a boss or board to report to.

Studio IX:                                What do you enjoy most about the work that you're doing?

Tobias Noyes:                        I absolutely love my team & company culture. One of our core values is to “take things personally.” As the founder, my desire is to provide challenging & meaningful work to my employees, which I believe fosters a culture of excellence and commitment.

The average American will spend 10,000 hours “working” over the next five years. Because of this, I don’t really like the term “work life balance”.  If my team and I viewed Renaissance Group as a necessary evil, just to pay the bills, we’re doing something wrong.

My teammates and I sincerely care about one another, our work, and our clients. It’s not just a method for a paycheck. We take it personally.

I love having the ability to do enjoyable, meaningful work with some of the most incredible people in the world.

Studio IX:                                And when did this company start?

Tobias Noyes:                        I started Spring semester, my fourth year in college. So, about a year and a half ago.

Studio IX:                                And you are the founder?

Tobias Noyes:                        I'm the founder.

Studio IX:                                Awesome.

Studio IX:                                So let’s backtrack to your passions, and think about the work you're doing. Is there a place where those dovetail in some sense?

Tobias Noyes:                        That’s a great question. Going back to my number one priority, Christ, I see Renaissance Group as an extension of that, which permeates every part of the business from company culture, to quality of service, to our clients.

I have a desire to positively impact the world around me. I see Renaissance Group as a method to do that. Ultimately, I plan on moving into services like cybersecurity, IT optimization, finance, etc. Ideally, Renaissance Group will become a full fledged consulting firm that can help nonprofits increase their efficiency and impact.

Studio IX:                                What's an aspect of the work that you do that people might be surprised to know about?

Tobias Noyes:                        We do a really good job of showing clients what we do, how we do it, and what are the results. We have a commitment to transparency, which is very important for a marketing firm. We’re confident in our work and the results that we provide. Too many firms have metrics like “brand awareness” and “engagement rate”. These things don’t mean much. People care about conversions–sales, donations, volunteer signups, etc. To the best of our ability, we avoid these “micro-conversions” and measure real results.

Studio IX:                                Is there a memorable story that comes to mind from your work? A turning point, anything in starting the company that stands out to you?

Tobias Noyes:                        Yeah. I was actually just recently having this conversation with one of my employees about this. Renaissance Group’s first client was a small, family-run business in Richmond, VA... Now, one and a half years later, we’re working with much larger clients, one of them is worth roughly 100 million. Graduating from UVA, I felt pressure to land a high paying corporate job. There’s insecurity not knowing whether or not I made the right decision to start this business. It was almost surreal to have the realization that we’ve actually come a very long way.

Studio IX:                                Where do you see all of this headed in the next five to ten years?

Tobias Noyes:                        I have a passion for starting things, not necessarily managing things.  I love web development and digital marketing, but I don’t see myself doing it long term. My plan is to continue to grow the business and then hire a manager to run it for me while I start another company, probably cybersecurity.

In ten years, my hope is to have several “consulting” type companies: marketing, IT optimization, cybersecurity, strategy/operations, etc. I can use those different companies in tandem to add value to other organizations. That’s where the name Renaissance Group came from. Stemming back from a “Renaissance Man,” who is someone that’s an expert in a variety of fields, I want to run a company or parent company that has expertise in a variety of fields. So long story short. For me, it’s not so much about the what (i.e. digital marketing), but the how and why.

Studio IX:                                What do you enjoy about being here at Studio IX?

Tobias Noyes:                       Honestly, I just love it as a co-working space. I was initially running the business out of Milli, which was very inefficient. It’s surprising what a monitor or two will do to improve your workflow.

My biggest issue is that the coffee is too good–I love snowing in space! I’m pretty sure I’m paying more to Snowing in Space than I am to Studio IX. (Laughter)

Studio IX:                                Cool, that's it.

Tobias Noyes:                       That's it?

Studio IX:                                Clean and simple.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: LILY GARCIA WALTON

Studio IX:                              Can you tell us who you are, and what you do?

Lily Walton:                           My name is Lily Garcia Walton.

Lily Walton:                           And I do a lot of things.

Lily Walton:                           Most people when they ask you what you do are interested in knowing your primary source of income, that's what I've found. I always resist that because I don't define myself by my primary source of income. It's a part of who I am, but it isn't all of who I am.

So, my primary source of income at the moment is Chief People Officer of an education consulting firm called Education First Consulting. That is unique and interesting in two respects. One is, everybody works remotely. There is no headquarters, or central locus of control. The second is, it was founded by a group from the Gates Foundation. The organization has grown up in this space where they, primarily, although not exclusively, work to implement systemic change in school districts through funding from major donors and also the Federal government, although not currently because we don't align philosophically with the current administration.

That's my primary source of income, but when people ask me what I do at parties, I usually say something like, I'm a gig economy workplace expert,  because that is my interest. I'm most passionately interested in how to intentionally transform the concept of the workplace to make it a place that our children can happily inhabit, and transforming education so that children are prepared to do that.

So, I do other things that are related to that. One of them is I accidentally became the founder of DisruptHR/Charlottesville, which is an annual speaking event that brings a diverse and eclectic group of people together to talk about the future of work and talent. We happen to benefit Computers for Kids, which is a STEM mentoring program for low income youth in the Charlottesville area that is really focused on teaching kids how to have agency, and be self sufficient, and creative, and inventive, which is part of what I really believe the future needs. Kids really enjoy it, as well.

 I've become very much invested in, and involved with that organization, and I'm on their board at the moment. Part of what I do is help to support alternative pathways for K-12 education through my work with Computers for Kids. I'm also a serial entrepreneur. I just can't help myself. I didn't actually recognize that as part of my identity until, possibly, the past year. A friend of mine, who is similarly afflicted, called me out on it. I finally said, wow, you're right. I realized that I had started four different enterprises throughout my career. I hadn't given myself credit for a couple of them because I started them with other people.

One of those things was very successful, and remains to this day. It's a law related non profit called Corporate Pro Bono. It's a matchmaking service for in house attorneys to find pro bono opportunities. Two of those things were not successful, ultimately, for different reasons. Maybe I should reframe that. They didn't achieve the success that we expected. They turned out to be something else. One of them was a gay dating app called Stagg. The other was a new economy law firm called Clearspire Law Company. The fourth thing, with which I'm still involved, is a digital education staffing platform called Teamed. I'm a minority owner of that organization. I serve as a legal and HR advisor.

What Teamed is seeking to do is actually provide a gig economy workplace for the types of professionals who work on digital education and to provide a place where those who need people to create digital education products to go to find all the types of professional they need in one place. It is a very specific and formidable challenge for people who want to create digital education to find all of the different types of professionals they need, from instructional designers, to videographers, to writers, instructional technologists. It's complicated.

That's the market niche that we're seeking to address. We've had some moderate success. We have been around for about a year and a half now and are still considered in the eyes of the market more or less a regular recruitment or staffing agency.

The market hasn't yet caught up to the idea that they need something unique or different to fulfill their needs in the space.

Lily Walton:                           I'm also on the board of the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, which is fun because it's a hub of connection for me to the types of people in this town who are interested in transforming the workplace, specifically through technology innovation. That is another passion project that I think is consistent with my orientation.

Lily Walton:                           If you look at LinkedIn, you will see that I have very deliberately edited my tagline so it doesn't default to my employer. What it says is, "Humanist, Futurist, and Fearless Leader". I think, at a philosophical or a spiritual level, that is what I do.

Lily Walton:                           I think I'm a humanist in the sense that I am really excited about bringing out the potential in people. There's nothing that moves me more than seeing a person come into their potential, so that's what I do in different ways in all of the work that I do.

Lily Walton:                           I'm also very clearly obsessed with the future. I'm as interested in the present as I am  interested in how things are evolving, and what they're going to become.

Lily Walton:                           I have learned over the years to lead fearlessly, in different ways. I think that I've come to recognize that as a defining trait of mine in everything that I do. I really don't worry too much about the potential for failure. I actually tend to believe that it's just as likely, if not more likely, that things will turn out really well. I think that has worked to my advantage, and to my disadvantage. Remember I said I was a failed entrepreneur twice?

Lily Walton:                           I'll probably try to start something again several times in my life before I'm done.

Studio IX:                                Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lily Walton:                           That's a very long and detailed answer to what you perhaps thought was a simple and straight forward question.

Studio IX:                                No, it's great,

Lily Walton:                           It's funny. I have a website, I have an LLC, I have a “consulting business” where I've tried to turn who I am into something, and it's really hard to do.

Studio IX:                              Another of our members was saying the same thing. They said; “I don't know how to size it up in a CV”. That they tried for a long time to sew it together and to make it look as though it was consistent.

Lily Walton:                           Right.

Studio IX:                                But at some point they just gave up.

Lily Walton:                           Well, yeah. It's like, hello world. Here I am.

Studio IX:                                Twenty years of experience.

Lily Walton:                           Right.

Studio IX:                                Yeah.

Studio IX:                                I think that's true for a lot of us. That it's only in hindsight that we can look back and see how the connections came into being, right?

Lily Walton:                           Yeah.

Studio IX:                                I'm interested in this, and then this, which seems so random, then this over here. Then they all come to a confluence, a delta, or something.

Lily Walton:                           Yeah.

Studio IX:                                Is there a story that you could share? One that is memorable, a turning point in the course of your work.

Lily Walton:                           I'll tell you this. A decision that I made that was very important.

Lily Walton:                           In the fall of 2017. I decided to leave my big corporate job. I just took a buy out package. People talk about that as being their dream. Oh, I just wish somebody would give me a buyout package, and I could hit reset and start over.

Lily Walton:                           It's actually terrifying to do that.

Lily Walton:                           I felt like I had no choice because I knew in my heart I was not philosophically aligned with the direction that my job was going. At the time, I think I told myself that I didn’t have a choice in a way that was disempowering. Then, in the months that followed I captivated this important and deeper narrative that told me this was a very powerful choice, and it was a legitimate choice. I could have just as easily gone the other way and stayed on the train.

Lily Walton:                           I could have gotten off later, but that process of deprogramming myself from the idea that I needed to have a job that could define me, that had a great deal of professional and social currency, and that demanded so much of me on so many different levels that it was a container for everything I was. That idea, the death of that idea, was really important.

Lily Walton:                           Stepping out of that space is what created this compelling white board where I was actually able to narrate for myself what my life meant, and who I was. That was a critical pivot point.

Lily Walton:                           You were speaking earlier about mid life crises. Maybe that was my mid life crisis, right?

Lily Walton:                           It isn't just, oh, I left my big corporate job and decided to take a different direction. It's what that process meant, and what that did to me as a person.

Studio IX:                                Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lily Walton:                           I realized that ... This is going to sound terribly maudlin, right, but it isn't about the destination. It's about the journey.

Lily Walton:                           It's one thing to write that in a quote and enjoy it, and reflect upon it. It's another thing to really internalize it. This idea that we are all in a process of becoming, that is never ending. If we can give over to the journey, really give over to the journey, it becomes thrilling. That's what I have experienced. It isn't like I didn't have happiness or fulfillment. All the things that I've said about myself were true before that decision, and they remain true now. But it's kind of like my senses were dampened in a way that they no longer are.

And I know that there is more. I think that's part of where my decision to embrace this idea of fearlessness comes in. I think that's what comes to mind when you ask that question.

Studio IX:                               What do you enjoy most about the work that you do?

Lily Walton:                           In all of the work that I do, paid or unpaid, I enjoy being a part of seeing these serendipitous connections among people that cause unexpected things to happen. I've learned to follow the bread crumbs. If you told me, I have this friend, you really should talk to him, I would totally call your friend. Whenever anybody presents me with an opportunity to make a connection, or explore something ... If you tell me there's a podcast I should listen to, I write it down and I go and listen to it. I'm available for whatever messages come to me in life.

Lily Walton:                           That leads me to an experience of my life that is defined by these seemingly serendipitous connections, and the things that evolve from those connections. I think that's what I really enjoy.

Studio IX:                               What’s something about your work that people might be surprised to know?

Lily Walton:                           I have absolutely no system for managing my work.

Lily Walton:                           I keep five different journals. I have, literally, a drawing pad where I'll sketch things out with a marker. I have Post It notes all over my desk. I make notes to myself in my phone, I send myself emails. Somehow, it all magically happens on time and with quality.

Studio IX:                               Do you have a sense of, or can you see where you might be in five to 10 years?

Lily Walton:                           I have no idea.

Lily Walton:                           I don't like the idea of leaving this area. I love this town, I love the people here. If you told me I'd be somewhere else in five to 10 years, that might make me sad, but in five to 10 years maybe that would make sense to me. I know that I will continue to be involved with the cause of developing people in some way, for the rest of my life. That has been consistent. I can imagine that I will find ways to inhabit the world more creatively, as time goes on, but I don't know what that looks like.

Studio IX:                               Last question. What do you enjoy about being here, about working at Studio IX?

Lily Walton:                           The opportunity for connection to other people who, I think, also embrace the journey.

Studio IX:                               Well said.

Studio IX:                               Thanks so much for your time, Lily.

Lily Walton:                           Thank you.

Member Spotlight: Jed Verity

Studio IX:              Hey, J

Jed Verity:            Good morning.

Studio IX: Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me.

Jed Verity: Of course.

Studio IX:              So let’s start at the top. Tell us who you are and what it is that you do?

Jed Verity:             My name is Jed Verity, and I am currently in my last two days at DigitalGlobe, which is a satellite company.

Studio IX: Two days. So there’s something new on the horizon. Say more.

Jed Verity: Well, I didn't ever intend to get it involved with satellites. When we first landed here at Studio IX, we were a Charlottesville-based startup, looking for a space to work. We were acquired by DigitalGlobe in 2016 at which time the rest of the team moved to Colorado, but I stayed here. I was excited for that whole trajectory of starting something up and being acquired. But now it's not a great role for me, so I'm moving on and I'll have a couple of weeks off before I start a new job at GitHub, which is a relatively well-known open source software hosting company, and then some, which has recently been acquired by Microsoft.

Studio IX:              That’s great.

Jed Verity:             Yeah.

Studio IX:              So let’s dive in to something a little more personal. What are you passionate about?

Jed Verity: Generally?

Studio IX: Yeah.

Jed Verity:             Well, I'm very passionate about open-source software, which I think has, for better or worse, and I hope for better, greatly changed the world. I think the Internet, as we know it, would not have been possible without it - and so GitHub's a recently exciting development for me because I feel like it’s enabled a lot of what we see out there in the world today.

Jed Verity:             I'm also passionate about Buddhism, which is a subject that I have been studying formally since my undergrad days, and then through a master's and PhD. & which, my mom will tell you, was kind of weirdly interesting to me from a very young age. In fact, all things Pan-Asian were interesting to me. I traveled there a lot as a kid, and the summer after eighth grade I lived with my family in Japan. That kind of put things into overdrive for me. My passion for the subject led to an interest in exploring how I could apply lessons from Buddhist philosophy and practice, and even, to an extent, history and culture, to what I do. Professionally, but also personally, there's a lot of useful practices one can apply when you're raising kids, trying to have empathy and compassion, to empower people, and to have a good perspective on things.

Jed Verity:             I'm also quite passionate about horror movies and heavy metal.

Studio IX:              Really? Wow! That’s surprising to me. Coupled with the Buddhism.

Jed Verity:            I discovered both as a teenager, horror movies and heavy metal that is. Kind of at the same time. They were both socially acceptable ways to sublimate transgressive energy, anger, frustration, aggression, things like that.

Studio IX:              Makes perfect sense.

Jed Verity:             Are you a fan?

Studio IX:              Metal? I know little about it.

Jed Verity:             Really?

Studio IX:              I mean, whatever was on MTV growing up, you know? Metallica, off-shoots, etc. But nothing much beyond.

Jed Verity:            Yes.

Studio IX:              But I'm fascinated by it. By all the things that are happening in the genre currently.

Jed Verity:             Yeah.

Jed Verity:             I think part of what draws me to metal is it's, in a way, sublingual. I've never enjoyed music for the lyrics. I appreciate that there are amazing lyrical, poetic writers out there. I just never understood, until later in life, the appeal of somebody like Bob Dylan. Where it's about the story, the songwriting itself, et cetera, because, for me the value of music and of finding my way into music was totally sublingual, emotional, biorhythm kind of stuff.

To the extent that metal does have lyrics, it's trying to connect to that primeval embodied experience, more than it's trying to weave some sort of narrative.

So bringing it all back, for me, I think what has enabled me to be a generally normal person in polite society has been these particular channels for transforming subversive transgressive energy. That includes things like horror movies and heavy metal, but also tantric Buddhism, which at its core is about recognizing the power inherent in so-called taboo subjects and practices and thinking, and transgression and aggression, all of that. Figuring out how to transform them into these things that are really elevated, like compassion and perspective on larger humanity and relating to people and connecting, and participating in productive ways in society.

I think that’s the common thread around a lot of my passions. They do not try to suppress so-called negative or problematic parts of us, but instead recognize the power of those things, and turn them in to cultural products and positive forces in our relationships.

Studio IX:              Well said.

Studio IX: Could you share a memorable story? Something in the course of your work, in your life. A turning point?

Jed Verity:           Yeah. There was a guy in my life who was very influential and still is. I worked with him in San Francisco, and he was the first person I'd met to describe a life project of trying to connect people to meaningful work, as opposed to just giving them a job. He attended UC Santa Cruz, majored in utopian thinking, or something like that. Clearly, he was bringing that out into the world.

Every person in the world, when given really meaningful, fulfilling work, if you could get to that state, then a lot of these other conflicts would just naturally fall away. He created an organization that was about finding people who are specially challenged in that way. Were either unclear about their own direction or just people who had trouble holding a job, who were challenging personalities. He was trying to give them a place to work & providing opportunities for transforming their lives into a new experience.

It was amazing.

And it was amazing to see. One of the great success stories was this total punk rock, fuck-all-of-you kind of character who he had been friends with growing up. Super-tattooed, gauge earrings, pierced everywhere. A total dismissive attitude. But he needed to do something to make some money. Julian hired him to just more or less help with some basic administrative stuff, part time, to give him something to do, and then to help out with the business side of things. In short order, the guy swiftly became the heart of the whole organization. He is now essentially the COO. To bring somebody like that in, and try to give them meaningful work and to take care of them, and for that to be the core of the mission of the company, was just mind-blowing. I think it changed the course of my life to see that.

I had a friend who went to prison a number of years ago, and he was a business owner at the time, so he had to give up his business. He had family, and he was going to be in prison for many years. I told Julian about this and about how sad it was that his family was sort of desperate and didn't know what to do. Julian's first thought was, "What kind of work can we give him to do that he could do from jail, that we could then pay his family for. His first thought was “here's somebody in hardship”, immediately just trying to put together a meaningful work plan that could then also support his family. So he's that rare kind of person who's just so committed to that.

Studio IX:              Amazing.

Studio IX: Let’s look forward a moment. Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years?

Jed Verity:           Let me answer that by not answering it and instead sharing this. There was a Nobel prize winner who was asked ... I think it was actually Mother Teresa who was asked, "The scope of your efforts is so massive, you have helped so many people. How do you do it? It's one thing to help a person here and there. It's another thing to have helped now, thousands, tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of people."

And her answer was, "Try not to think about numbers. Start by helping one person at a time. Start with the person nearest to you." For me, my story, and my resume, is a little weird and I've had to create lots of different frameworks to help it be coherent, cohesive for me and for potential employers and at cocktail parties. I've decided I'm going to stop doing that.

I've gotten to a point in my career, 20 years into this field, this industry, I know enough to understand things from a broader perspective, and most important thing I can do right now is help people who are starting out, help organizations that are trying to establish positive and empowering cultures. And try to keep people connected to the joy of building things and building them together. I have no idea what that might look like five years from now, but I know that those values will be the same. And the next way I'm going to do that is to go to GitHub, which already has an amazing culture, and try to contribute to that, the best way I can.

Studio IX:              That’s great.

Studio IX: Ok, last question. What do you love about being here at Studio IX?

Jed Verity:             So, I think there are a few different aspects to that. One is that it's really nice to be with people, even if you're not going to work with them. And so, there's some social contact that I really like, that I don't have working at home. It also makes me a healthier person. I gotta shower before coming here (laughter), as opposed to working from home. I don't eat everything in the pantry. Chocolate chips right into the peanut butter with whip cream on top.

Thanks to you and James, there's a real soul here that is absent from the more sterile co-working places that I've been. I think thats partly the design & the work you've done to curate really compelling pieces in the gallery. I think it's also an attitude and vibe that comes from your personality that kind of just trickles down into the space.

It all contributes to a really productive, comfortable, fulfilling, empowering environment. It's the most successful co- working setup I've seen.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: JEFFREY BOYNTON

Jeffrey Boynton is a long time member, contributor to and integral part of the Studio IX community. His membership has seen him explore nearly every amenity and avenue we have to offer — and he just keeps growing (and going!). He and his partner, Samantha (Lane), have just completed another chapter of their work together and it seemed like the perfect moment to reflect upon how it all started, here at at Studio IX that is. Thank you, Jeffrey (and Sam) for all you bring to this community. Love to you both.

Enjoy.

ONE FROM THE ARCHIVES: JEFFREY BOYNTON | April 2019

Studio IX:                    So Jeffrey, tell us who you are and what it is you do?

Jeffrey Boynton:          My name is Jeffrey Boynton and I design lighting and I hold space for becoming more aware of embodiment…how we embody ourselves in this existence. i5 Lighting Collaborative, which does the lighting design and then After Before Productions, which is the partnership I have with my beloved to teach 5Rhythms, a global movement meditation practice... I have no idea which to talk about.

Studio IX:           This is probably a good question to get into that weaving. What are you passionate about?

JB:                I'm passionate about the way that we experience and see things. Light is critical to that as is our sense of being in a body, which shapes our experience of how much we can sense from our environment, how much is available to us. On one level,  I shape space through light and what we see, and on the other, I explore what is hidden versus expressed in the body. The way we move through the world.

Studio IX:      Let’s go off script for a second, how did those two things evolve? Let’s start with lighting. What’s the back story of how you came into it?

JB:               It started in theater and in high school. I got interested in theater and I got instantly interested in the technical aspect of it, which to me was very artistic but more craft-like…like these highly complex tools to produce light and dim in and out of scenes but the ability to create something that had a real attachment to the story and attachment to emotion for the viewer, that really appealed to me. So I thought I wanted to design the devices and I went to school for electrical engineering and then realized, I just want to be part of creating these experiences. So I started designing lighting for theatrical productions, for music events and then ultimately for dance, which then led me into experiencing more choreography and then actually being in dance pieces myself.

Studio IX:                               And where was that?

JB:                  Most of that exploration took place at Arizona State in Phoenix, AZ.

Studio IX:       And then the other entity.

JB:                The 5Rhythms?

Studio IX:       Yeah, how did that evolve?

JB:                 I discovered that in New York City. I was involved in a lot of dance theater, a lot of authentic movement, contact improvisation, different ways of moving and being with oneself and others through embodied practice. It was not so much about performance at that point. It was more about knowing oneself through movement. And when I moved to New York City, I found 5Rhythms and just started going once, twice, three times a week and it was a way to get below the words and just flush through all the busyness of the city (in 2001) and a new career. At the same time I was stepping into this career in architectural lighting, which was a transition point for me.

Studio IX:        If you could sum up 5Rhythms in an elevator pitch. How would you describe it?

JB:                  5Rhythms is an exploration of the way that energy moves in the body and the philosophy can be captured in five essential rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. Each of the qualities that resonate in that journey and together form a Wave.

Studio IX:        Can you share a memorable story from your work? One that stands out to you? A pivotal moment. A great project. A personal epiphany?

JB:                One thing that stands out is how scattered my interests are, but how they're always tied to some basic curiosity about how things are. For instance, I've been posting a series of pictures of the view from my office. The idea of the office being the place where we do our work and how many different environments that is for me, how many different connotations it has.

Studio IX:      Depending on the day, or your sate of mind, or the light in the atrium? Something like that?

JB:                More like it's the lighting booth at the Lynchburg's Academy Center for the Arts one day, then it's here and I'm looking out through the atrium to the sky and the following day, it’s the dance floor at Fry’s Springs and then last night it was a site visit. It's fascinating to me right now, how many different places I do my work, how it doesn't really have a boundary or container. That it has many containers. 

Studio IX:      I like that.

JB:              I enjoy seeing something created, something’s that ephemeral, that won't be there for long. I've always loved that about the theater, but then I also have this love of architecture, where I'm building something and defining something that will hopefully be around for a very long time. So permanence and impermanence at the same time. There's a lot of paradox.

Studio IX:     Yeah. There does seem to be a connection between lighting design and 5Rhythms in that regard. Something that's a medium & experiential. You're not building something solid but creating an experience through the senses, through the body,..

JB:                And after 18 years of practice, 5rhythms has really become a primary philosophy, a spiritual practice for me. One that informs the design work and the way that I do business. Because it’s a philosophy, I can apply what I know in the body to what I see in the world & thereby how I am approaching a project. 

Studio IX:     Where do you see yourself and your work in the next five to ten years? 

JB:               I have no idea. (laughter)

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: DENISE STEWART

Studio IX:             Who are you?

Denise:                    I'm Denise Stewart.

Studio IX:             And what do you do?

Denise:                    I'm a theater artist. I do playwriting, acting, directing, devising. I'm also a coach, I coach people on wellness and creativity, and I coach businesses on using improv skills and public speaking. I'm also an instructor. I teach at UVA in the drama department.

Studio IX:             What are you passionate about, and does it play a part in the work that you do?

Denise:                    For sure. I think I'm passionate about creating, and it seems that that is ... that seems to then manifest in lots of different ways, so whether it's creating bonds within a classroom, and then, also creating a stronger love for an art form, say, something like improv. So creating an atmosphere where people can work freely, and really release, or even get back to a place where they're more, just, a time when they were more freely creative, and didn't feel so self-conscious. I really take it seriously to provide those spaces and show myself as somebody who works like that, as a way of giving permission to students of any age, giving them permission to create.

Denise:                    And the same thing happens when I'm talking about, when I'm coaching with somebody one-on-one — creating an atmosphere where somebody could talk about what they really wanted, or talk about what they really hate, or talk about that ... something they really need to change, and then we could share stories and strategies. And that's an environment, too, that's why I'm creating that ability for somebody to say, this is gonna be ... this is what my life's gonna look like going forward.

Studio IX:             I see that. What do you love most about the work?

Denise:                    You know, I love all ... there's ... I just love all the moments. There are so many indelible moments in my life in theater. When I've looked back at a production that I was in, no matter what I was doing in it, it's less about that whole thing and more about these really particular moments throughout all of it, that are very clear images to me. And so, watching students... just, for instance, I'm directing a piece with teens at Live Arts right now, and we haven't been able to get together very often because they are very busy in their classes and their extracurricular activities.

Denise:                    But when we do get together ... and then, we're working on something, and then I ask for a change, or I say something else, and maybe we all have a big laugh, or, there's just that, something about that moment. It's just so perfect or so funny, then I think we all remember those. We all leave every experience with a little catalog of moments, and I love that, no matter what I'm doing. So I think about that for my whole life, like, the catalog of moments. That's what makes it so fun.

Studio IX:             I see.

Studio IX:             I love that. Well, that's a good segue. What's a memorable story that you could share from the work?

Denise:                    Hmmm ... a memorable time is working on my one-woman show, Dirty Barbie and Other Girlhood Tales. So it was a process that ... I had never worked solo like that. Of course, I’m a playwright, but I had never worked on a solo show in any capacity. And so, working on that solo show, eventually, there came time where I had to start to show it to people. I was showing it to my coach, who was really wonderful with me, Bree Luck.

Denise:                    And then, I started showing it to my son, and then to small groups of friends who saw it and gave me feedback. I brought in people that I trusted, and when they would say, do this, or do that, I just did it. I did whatever they said because I was hungry for collaboration at that point. And then, I remember the week I took it down to North Carolina to open it, and I still had about four days left where I could rehearse, and I brought in other people that had worked with me years ago to see it and then made little tweaks. Whatever they said, I just did it.

Denise:                    Every one of those, I think ... I think everything anybody told me in those days became part of the show. And that’s really wonderful, because sometimes when I’m rehearsing a moment, I remember the exact moment between that trusted audience member and me. And opening that first week in a town that was only 20 minutes from the town that I grew up in, and having a lot of people that had known me and my family that ended up showing up, that I didn't know were coming, and I didn't know the word had spread about the show, and that it worked, that that show worked.

Denise:                    I cried a lot in the bathtub when I was building that show, not knowing, what have I got? What have I got? What is this? And then, gradually, when I was rehearsing, I knew it was coming together, but it wasn't until really that first week of that run, and I was like, oh, shit, I really made something. And I've been touring off and on for nine years, that show. Maybe I'll be 80, and I'll still be playing my seventh grade self, throwing tantrums onstage

Studio IX:             I hope so.

Denise:                    There have been so many memorable moments from that show, that I think have encouraged and shaped me as an artist in ways I couldn't have predicted.

Studio IX:             Yeah. What's an aspect of what you do that might surprise people to know? I think that's the hardest question I ask, because it's all like nose on face, because we know everything that we do, but other people don't.

Denise:                    So the question is, what is an aspect of what we do that might surprise people.

Studio IX:             To know.

Denise:                    I guess an aspect of something I do is I record a lot of things, and that I only wish I could record more. I think it would surprise people that I read the Daily Progress every day. Some articles or tidbits I find it so hilarious and ridiculous, but every ... other, you know, more lofty papers are so scrubbed free of what really a town is, and it's a town paper. And I've always been fascinated by town papers. I think people would be surprised is, maybe surprised to know that, if I'm riding in the car, and there's a commercial like, Charlie Obaugh Chevrolet, I strive to get that accent right for that commercial and see if I can do the whole commercial with him with his accent. Maybe people would be surprised about where I go in terms of the grotesque or the ridiculous or the everyday super regular moments. That stuff's really ... that's really interesting to me. I just tear out stuff. I find pictures, and I don't know what to do with 'em. I stick 'em in my notebook, I keep a daily journal. I only wish I ... I get mad, 'cause I'm not doing it more, and I feel like all this is leading to the next show, but I've been keeping a journal since I was nine years old.

Studio IX:             So good. Where do you see yourself in your work, like, in the next five, ten years?

Denise:                    I see myself with two more solo shows coming out, and a stronger coaching and writing business. A writing business sounds weird…what I mean by that is more ... that I’d be writing, publishing, and performing, and creating workshops…maybe on autobiography, helping people work with their own stories to create whatever it is. I created a one-woman show based on true stories, but maybe people want to create something else — I think I could be of help with that.

Studio IX:             Okay. Last question.

Denise:                    Okay.

Studio IX:             What do you enjoy about being here at Studio IX?

Denise:                    I love being here. I feel I'm the most productive here than where I am anywhere else. And I love coffee, that's really important to me, actually is really important to me.

Studio IX:             I'm gonna put that in all caps.

Denise:                    COFFEE!!! And I love the friends that I've met, and the people that I’m not friends with (yet), but we nod at each other in the hallways, and I love that we don't work together, so we don't bug each other. So we can be friendly, and I can watch them working, and their work inspires me to work harder, and we have wonderful conversations, but we don't bother each other. Right now I'm really into how I can create more deep work…spaces of time where I can work longer without worrying about the clock, because I haven't set my schedule up very well that way, and yet, I know my work needs that. So that's what I'm really working for in 2019, is to have bigger chunks of time, and I think Studio IX can give me that.

Studio IX:             Rock on, sister.

Denise:                    Yeah, thank you.

Studio IX:             That's that.

Denise:                    There are more things to love about Studio IX, but ...

Studio IX:             No, that was ...

Denise:                    ... that was good. It was good-

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ALBERTO NAMNUM

Studio IX: We'll start simple. Who are you and what do you do?

Alberto Namnum:             My name is Alberto Namnum. I was born in Mexico, moved to New York when I was young, came to UVA for school, and I started a restaurant called Roots Natural Kitchen. It's a healthy, fast casual restaurant.

Studio IX:                              What part of Mexico?

Alberto Namnum:              Mexico City.

Studio IX:                               Amazing place.

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah, I go back three times a year, four times. I love it.

Studio IX:                              What are you passionate about?

Alberto Namnum:              Oh, that's a good question. I think I ... ooh, I've not ever been asked this.

Studio IX:                               Take your time.

Alberto Namnum:              I do think a part of me is passionate about restaurants, but I think there's a reason why I always wanted to open a restaurant. I was in this class at Wake Forest my first year, and they asked us, what's your goal? And then it was weird because the rest of the class then got to ask you questions, and then would assign a percent likelihood that you achieve your goal, which is a weird concept.

But my goal was to open a restaurant, and then I only got assigned a 1% chance, I remember. Because I guess I didn't like to cook, which is why they only gave me 1%. I think the reason I like restaurants is because, it's all a really emotional experience. In a way there's certain, you go for the entertainment of it.

The food is part of it. The service is part of it. I guess I'm passionate about making people feel good. I've never said that out loud though, so that may not be true. I don't know, but it's interesting. I feel like our restaurant's a really big part of that, like natural food is a really big part of that. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe I should go with that.

Studio IX:                              Did you have experiences growing up in Mexico City, where you thought, "I want people to feel this?" Or did you come to this more recently, due to the culinary boom, new concepts, etc…

Alberto Namnum:              No. I'm actually Lebanese, and food was always at the center of everything. My Dad's mom was a phenomenal cook. When I would go down to Mexico for four months, the entire summer, and we'd just hang out the whole time, There was just the details, the sensitivity around how food was prepared and presented.

There was always something so exact and beautiful about the attention and detail to food,. It seems liked half of it is like one part of the brain, which is how things look and feel, and the other part is lharder to put a finger on. It's like ordering things, and having them for people prepare ... I don't know. It just seemed more complicated. I guess that's why I was interested in it. And then my family, well my dad's uncle, owns four taco restaurants. They're sit down, but it's Mexican street food in a sit down setting in Mexico.

Studio IX:                              What's the name of it?

Alberto Namnum:              Casa Del Pastor

Studio IX:                              Sounds good.

Alberto Namnum:              Tastes good.

Alberto Namnum:              You can always tell, the smaller the tortilla, the better the taco.

Studio IX:                              What do you love most about the work that you're doing right now?

Alberto Namnum:              You can affect a lot of people on a daily basis. The people that work at Roots, but hundreds and hundreds of people that walk in every day. If it goes well you can do something awesome. If you run poorly one day, you can ruin it all. It's really intense, you have an influence in the world. When people describe their day, a lot of people will mention where they ate or how they felt after what they ate. For 1,000 people in Charlottesville, for a part of their story to be at Roots that day, is cool. And that's each day.

Alberto Namnum:              So it does feel like we're changing things. Even though it's slightly, we are doing something.

Studio IX:                               Influencing the culture and the community.?

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

Studio IX:                               Absolutely.

Can you share a memorable story?

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

There's a lot. I think one of the funniest stories for me, well, there's two. I remember the argument over whether we serve romaine or not was a good one. It was like, "You have to serve romaine, you're a salad restaurant. I was actually heading more to the other side of it.

And to Alvero, my co-founder, to his credit, he was like, "Well, we're not. We don't have to do anything." I just remember that was probably days and days, had this session over romaine lettuce. It's so funny. If you walk into Roots now, you don't even think about it. There's so much thought in every single detail ... and romaine is a big one.

The other one that's memorable, is when we rolled out our app. We were doing dollar bowls, and the app was supposed to limit how many people could order. Because otherwise thousands of people would order, and we didn't know how to make 1,000 bowls. But some part of the code didn't work, it kept letting orders in.

And then before we know it, we're there, it's 10:30 and we're starting to make the orders for 12:00, which is the first pickup window. It's only supposed to be 10 orders, and it was actually 987 orders. So we had a line that was literally six people wide. I don't even know where you'd put 1,000 bowls let alone how you would make them. So we had to give out so many free bowls. We also let everyone into the restaurant.

Out of that $1 bowl, some people ended up getting three free bowls. Because we refunded everyone. We printed everyone's name, and they could come into the restaurant, we gave them a free bowl card, and we give them food. But that moment of going through the iPad and scrolling, and realizing that the scroll bar was the size of a cell. I was like, "Oh, something didn't work." That's a very vivid moment.

Studio IX:                               Great problem. (laughter)

It's very obvious to me as a customer that everything is considered, because I walk in there and it's just right. Everything flows, and all the flavor profiles and all the options, as far as greens and bases and all that.

Alberto Namnum:              A lot of credit there is due to the chefs we hired, the Zocalo guys.

Studio IX:                               They're the ones who came up with the menu?

Alberto Namnum:              They designed it. Yes. We were super involved but a lot of credit is due to them.

Studio IX:                               It's so good.

Alberto Namnum:              Thank you.

Studio IX:                               What's an aspect of your work that people might be surprised to know?

Alberto Namnum:              Let's see. I think most would know that it's hard, they know it's stressful. There's a lot of moving pieces, that they all know. It's hard to think about what's going to be a surprise to others. What did I not think was in restaurants, before I did this?

There's just a lot of processes to every single thing, like how many rags you order, and where you store the rags. How wide apart you put the shelving. If you hide pita chips behind the line, or under the line? Do you break down the lid boxes before you put them under, or not? Every little thing, because there's so many moving pieces and it's all going so fast, has to be considered.

It just seems like, I don't know, before when I would walk into a restaurant, I thought, "Oh this is just how they put it up and this is what they got." Maybe some places do that. But there is just a lot of thought to even the smallest thing, which is kind of funny. Because it's helping set up the staff for success. Otherwise, there will just be frustrations and stresses, at every point of the day. You don't need that.

Alberto Namnum:              I don't know if that's the most exciting answer.

Studio IX:                               It’s great. The importance of the little things. Because you're only working with a footprint of maybe 30 feet? Right?

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

Studio IX:                               A tight space that all of those people are working in.

Alberto Namnum:              Particularly in this restaurant, yeah.

Studio IX:                               And the volume of customers coming through. When I look at the tongs straddling the glass at the base of the greens — it just makes sense.

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

Studio IX:                               Efficiency.

Alberto Namnum:              Every little thing you see had a whole thought process behind it.

Studio IX:                               Where do you see yourself, the company, this industry in the next five to ten years?

Alberto Namnum:              Oh Wow. Let's go with industry first.

Studio IX:                               Okay.

Alberto Namnum:              Food is definitely going to become on par with how people see medicine and nutrition. I think the concept of going to a doctor, getting your blood checked before you have something occur. Trying to eat more blueberries in your diet to deal with blood pressure, then getting your blood checked. I think it'll become more mainstream to eat foods targeted at what your potential issues could be.

I feel we're going to start thinking about food beyond the obvious. We all know it's important to be healthy, but it's still a little bit of this concept of you eat healthy in order to live to 90, as opposed to living well and you eat unhealthy and you live to 80. I think we're going to go past that, past the 10 year difference, and realize the immediate benefits — things you start to feel.

Same with supplements. It's really hard to know what supplements you're meant to take. I was looking into it for a long time. I'd be like, "Who's meant to take Tumeric?, who isn't? Who's meant to take vitamin D, who isn't? I didn't know you need vitamin K in order to properly take vitamin D, because it helps the body to process it. This information is really hard to find. Why is it so complicated? So I just think it will become much more accessible. Everyone will start to know this stuff, and it'll be tailored to who you are and what you need.

Then hopefully, we'll have a lot more Roots locations. And potentially be doing a lot of fun stuff with catering. I think being industry leading in catering could be really interesting. Exploring these avenues of where I think the future of the industry is going. So on the app, and Alvero talks a lot about this, what kind of foods are people eating? How did they sleep that day, based on what they ate, etc ...

We’re starting to explore & go one step beyond the restaurant. Starting to get into where we think the industry is heading. It's like food as a tool. It's every day that you see it. I was on iTunes last night, and you're just starting to see the signs everywhere. The more popular documentaries, four out of the 10 were all about healthy eating. I get that it's January, it's still a resolutions season. But still, every day there are more people that want eat this kind of food.

The concept for us is in the attempt to make it actually taste good. If taste didn't matter, it'd be really easy. Everyone's just walking around with rock Kale. It'd be like, "Yeah, that food looks great." But sadly, unhealthy food has been made to taste so good, that you have to get somewhere close, to make it work.

Studio IX:                               So it's almost like dialing in impact versus efficiency? You need to produce food that can sell, that tastes good and moves, but it also has an immediate and positive impact on one’s energy and health?

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

Studio IX:                               It does seem to be catching. Even high-end cuisine. You see it in shows like : “Chef's Table”, “Ugly Delicious”, all these superstar chefs who are coming to a point of, "Oh, we have to bring this into a more mainstream impact." To make it not so exclusive.

Alberto Namnum:              Exactly.

The information is so exclusive right now. It's so hard to know what supplements you're meant to take. I actually do believe in supplements. They work. It's just difficult to know what you're meant to take.

It just seems that the way the medical field works is, “ I'll take your blood, if anything is wrong then I'll tell you to do something. If everything is okay, I won't tell you to do anything”. But things could be better than okay. I do think there's a range where we can do more to feel even better, even though technically there’s nothing wrong.

Studio IX:                               Yeah. That's a whole different view.

Alberto Namnum:              Yeah.

Studio IX:                               Which is amazing. It's not just preventative, it’s seeking greater potential.

Alberto Namnum:              Exactly. What's the line, where you go into the doctor, and say, "Oh, I'm having trouble sleeping." They would go probably go with the traditional route. I mean you can google it. It's like, are there too many screens you're watching before bed, or drinking coffee too late? But what have you had for dinner?

Studio IX:                               Yes!

Second to last question. Who came up with the pickled jalapeños??

Alberto Namnum:              Did they tell you to ask that?

Studio IX:                               No! (laughter) I'm a heat junkie.

Alberto Namnum:              Did you actually just ask that?

Studio IX:                              I always get sriracha, always get the hot stuff and I love the jalapeños.

Alberto Namnum:              I came up with it.

            I tried them at a local place here in town, something similar, and I was like, "We have to sell something like this." They're the greatest thing ever.

Studio IX:                               So good!

Alberto Namnum:              Did they tell you to ask me that? (laughter)

Studio IX:                               No, I mean, I told the team "I'm a heat Junkie, and I love pickled jalapenos." They're like, "You've GOT to ask Alberto about them. He's gonna shit."

Alberto Namnum:              The running joke is that I asked Henry what he thought of them, and he said, "They're normal jalapenos." Since then, the joke has continued that I'm really waiting for someone to write a review, whether on yelp or Google, that exclusively says, "These are the greatest, most irregular jalapenos I ever tasted?"

Studio IX:                               Yes! (laughter) .

Studio IX:  Okay. Last question. What do you enjoy most about being here at Studio IX?

Alberto Namnum:              It's awesome. You know what? Now that I think about it, it's something about the design, the layout or the interior, I feel this peaceful energy. Maybe it's atrium? It's good vibes. All you really need is this much space to be at work. But it's about the stuff around you, right? It affects your mind and your soul. I think there's good energy.

Alberto Namnum:              And maybe the very cool coffee shop (Sicily Rose) with a rose logo. I have very few stickers on my computer, but I put that one on. Because it reminds me of here.

Studio IX:                               Totally agree.

Alberto Namnum:              I missed it, being in *Pittsburgh.

Studio IX:                               So great to hear.

Studio IX:                               That’s all she wrote! You crushed it.

Alberto Namnum:              Was that helpful?

Studio IX:                               It was great. Such a pleasure. Thanks, Alberto.

Alberto Namnum:     Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: TIFFANY PILLIFANT

Studio IX:              Good morning, Tiff!

Tiffany:               Good morning.

Studio IX:          So let’s jump right in. Tell us who you are and what it is you do?

Tiffany:                    I'm Tiffany Pillifant. I'm the Marketing Performance and Insights lead for one of the three customer segments within Thomson Reuters. My job is to understand our customer and our market, our competitors, and how we best can position ourselves for differentiation, and then measure how well we're doing after the fact. So, I work with stakeholders in strategy, throughout marketing, and in the product development teams to figure out what they need to know from the market, and figure out if we're doing well.

Prior to that, I did broad business operations and special projects, so any time our executives needed a town hall presentation and a speech written, I would do that. And likewise, if we needed a location strategy for hiring people, I would research the pros and cons of hiring in, say Brazil versus Poland. And, prior to that, for 15 years I was in software development, so I did user experience, product management, and product strategy.

Studio IX:              What do you enjoy most about the work?

Tiffany:                    It's changed over time, but what I really enjoy about what I'm doing now is that I'm not exactly job-hopping, but every couple of years I get to take on a new role for the business, and I love being thrown into the deep end of something I know almost nothing about, and, you know, just learning alongside my teams, so I love the uncomfortable feeling of learning and a challenge. Yeah, I like not having the answers and trying to figure it out on my own. I love cleaning up big messes at work. So those are the things that I'm really enjoying right now with my job.

Studio IX:              What are you passionate about?

Tiffany:                    At work or at home?

Studio IX:               Generally.

Tiffany:                    Generally. 

Tiffany:                    That's a hard question. So, I was listening to a lecture at UVA the other day by a man named Dan Pink, and he's done a lot of research and written a lot of books on timing and leadership, and he said, The question is not what are you passionate about. The question is what do you do when you're not working? What are you thinking about? What are you waking up in the morning and wondering? When you're at the gym, what is running through your mind? And that really leads you to what you enjoy.

Studio IX:              Wow. Yeah. That makes sense.

Tiffany:                    And what I'm thinking about, besides, which is always the case, my kids and do they have the right clothes? And are they fed? And should I be challenging them more academically? And do I have the energy to do that? And thank God for the people who help me teach them. But outside of that, it's mostly about how I can do better, both professionally and personally. In a professional sense, it's a lot about cleaning up messes, either that I've made or somebody else has made. How do I take something and make it better than it was before I saw it?  A process at work, a presentation, or a marketing campaign. At home, you know, that dinner I cooked last night was awful. How can I do it better next time?

Studio IX:              Right.

Tiffany:                   Yeah, so it's just revisionist. It's all just backward looking revisionist stuff; constant reiteration.

Studio IX:              Can you share a memorable story from your work? Something that stands out.

Tiffany:                    Well, yes, but this is from the early days.

Studio IX:              Great!

Tiffany:                    So, I started out as a User Experience Designer for a software product, and the product was geared towards the academic publishing space. So, journals, academic, scientific, technical, medical journals. A good example is the New England Journal of Medicine. You hear them on the news all the time.

Studio IX:              Yes.

Tiffany:                    I was designing a new product for the staff of those journals to be able to review scientific literature that the authors were trying to get published, and we were working with a bunch of the editors-in-chief of these journals. So these are the premier people in their field worldwide. The best neurosurgeon, the best concrete engineer in the world, and I would travel around the country sitting with them, learning how they work, and what they needed, and getting feedback on prototypes that we put together. And to understand who we’re designing for I would give them a set of tasks to do, and, I will never forget, there were two guys who completely changed what we had to do just single handedly. One was a man who, when I asked him how he would assign a paper to one of his editors for review and to show me in the system how he would do that, he didn't even turn on his computer. He wrote it on a sticky note and gave it to his secretary, and he said, "That's how I would do it." And I said, "Okay. So you're not going to use the system."

The second time, a man was having trouble. This is a man who is a brain surgeon. He was absolutely brilliant. He was having trouble completing one of the tasks in the prototype and he asked me for help. You're not supposed to give help, but I felt a little bad and so I said, "Okay. Put your mouse on this button and click it once," and he picked up his mouse off the table, pressed it to his computer screen, and clicked it once. And I was like alright. Well, it's a good thing we're doing these design sessions because now I know I have to really back it up.

Studio IX:              That's amazing.

Tiffany:                    Yeah, it was memorable. It reminded me that the whole job as a User Experience Designer is to know who you're designing for.

Studio IX:              Yeah.

Tiffany:                    And you have to get creative sometimes about, you know, people at one end or the other of the extreme, and it turns out that a lot of people who are premier in their field in scientific, technical, and medical fields are of a different generation, and they will not use computers, so ... It's changing now, but for a while there it was that we had to kind of switch and design for secretaries.

Studio IX:              This is not on the list, but I'm curious, do you see anything that’s been gained or lost in that transition?

Tiffany:                   From no computers to computers?

Studio IX:              Post-It notes to technology.

Tiffany:                    Oh, for sure. I mean, yes and no. There's gains and losses on both sides. It depends how you weight the equation, where the balance lies. In terms of productivity, cost savings, it's huge. Obviously, you can't send a courier in the mail to send all this stuff that you could send before, and then wait for a response, or pick up the phone, but then you lose that type of human to human interaction that makes the workplace, that's probably more important in the workplace.

Tiffany:                    And so I think we have hit this rubber band, this kind of slingshot affect, where you get to the maximum productivity, and we are there as an economy right now, at maximum productivity level, but how then do you back it up to a place where interaction and humanness matters at work again? I think what all the research shows is that the “what” you do is table stakes now, everyone can do amazing things. People know how to manipulate data, people understand technology, but how to do it, and how to do it well, while including other people along the way, taking advantage of other peoples’ strengths along the way is the biggest question now.

Studio IX:              Efficiency is sort of obsolete.

Tiffany:                    Exactly. Before the release of technology, it was about how quickly could you do it, how well could you do it, how much could you do it. Now, all of those things are irrelevant. It's about how you do it and how you work with other people along the way. So, the whole leadership skillset is different now.  You know, data analytics is a huge prerequisite to almost any job that you have now in the marketplace. Where people like me, who graduated 20 years ago, it was not that. Email was new.

Studio IX:              Yeah it's amazing. What's an aspect of your work that may surprise people to know?

Tiffany:                    Well, I'll talk about my previous role since I am still surprised every day about my new role, being only two weeks in. I think the thing about my previous role that would surprise people is that just because my role was primarily to support executives, in whatever they needed help with. I think what I learned that was surprising to me is just how much time, and effort, and thought goes into actually making things work in the interior of a business. It's not about necessarily about relying on good people to execute or people to have good ideas, it's also all about organization and planning. It took me by surprise when my boss and I worked for three weeks on a meeting agenda, but it's all for good in the end, but those types of things often go unnoticed or underrepresented, but they do really make a difference in terms of efficiency and productivity. Kind of a boring thing, but there's nothing really surprising.

Studio IX:              Where do you see yourself & where do you see the industry in 5 to 10 years?

Studio IX:              

Tiffany:                    For me it's always about what's the plan for my family and then how does my job - what do I need to do in my job, or what kind of job do I need have to support that. So for us, we want to be living internationally, within the next five years we want to move internationally, live there and be imbedded.

Tiffany:                    We would love to be in Central Europe, so we could travel all over Europe and Asia easily. So that's what we want to do and to be honest, and this is something that drives people at my work crazy, I don't really care what I do when I'm there. I just want to do enough so we can get on a train and travel and experience another culture. So, 5 to 10 years, I hope to have come back from living in another country, settling down, and still looking at retiring, hopefully early.

Studio IX:              That's great.

Studio IX: Last question - what do you enjoy most about being here? About being at Studio IX.

Tiffany:                    I think one of the things that surprised me from the beginning is just how diverse the community is here and it's one of the things that I find really refreshing and energizing. So, within the first week, I met people who are studying religion, people who were writing books, people who were writing political articles, sales leaders, leadership coaches, programmers, and everyone has a different point of view and what was really interesting, and what continues to be interesting is what everybody's talking about on the phone. Everybody doing totally different things, in a totally different style, for a completely different end game, and it's fascinating. Whereas, when you work with all of your colleagues, it's homogenous, it's cyclical.

Studio IX:              You have to watch what you say.

Tiffany:                    Always have to be careful what you say. You know, when people come here, they come here to work and there is definitely a feeling that ”this is where I come to do my work. This is where I'm coming to be productive and I don't need to walk on eggshells while I'm doing it.” I think there is a comradery in terms of kindred spirits that don't want to be working from home all the time, but we also need a little bit of space, but we are within arms reach. That's what I like.

Studio IX:              That's it. You did great!

Tiffany:                   Phew. (laughter)

Studio IX:              You knocked it out of the park.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: CHELSEA HILL

StudioIX:               Good morning, Chelsea.

Chelsea Hill: Hey! Good morning.

Studio IX: Thanks for taking a moment to sit down with me. Let’s jump right in. Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Chelsea:                My name is Chelsea Hill. I am the site manager for GEM Management’s new property being built on Fifth Street, Timberland Park Apartments. It's an affordable housing complex. We have an income cap, applicants can't make over a certain amount, but for those that fall under the income cap, we try to help them out as much as we can. Affordable living in Charlottesville is impossible.

Studio IX:             It is becoming increasingly difficult. Can you tell us what’s most fulfilling about the work you’re doing?

Chelsea:               My people. I get to meet people every day. Just getting to know everybody, and listening to a little bit of their background stories, about what happened and why they're here. What happened in life situations and why they need affordable housing.

Studio IX:            What drives you? What are you passionate about?

Chelsea:                Making others happy. I think making a difference in somebody's life, to get to do so, makes the whole job worth it.

Studio IX:             What led you to the work you’re doing? How did you get started?

Chelsea:                So, I am a RN (Registered Nurse).  I worked for two years in the NICU and I worked on the Labor & Delivery unit. It's a lot to the job, emotionally,. You get super attached to your patients. So, I still wanted that every day connection with different people, but not so much of the heart-pulling aspect of the job. I could meet with different people every day and help them out but not have to watch them pass away,

Studio IX:             That would be extremely difficult.

Chelsea:               Yeah, I did it for 3 years.

Studio IX:             And how long have you been with GEM?

Chelsea:               4 months now.

Studio IX:             Can you share a memorable story from your time at GEM? Something that stands out to you?

Chelsea:                Yeah. I have an applicant, she's actually moving in with us, an older lady. She's super sweet and the house that she's living in, the owners are selling it from under her and they're kind of basically renovating other houses around her, kind of pushing and weaseling her out, she's been in that house for 8 years and she's an older elderly lady and she has Section 8 and everybody knows it's hard hard hard to find housing in Charlottesville that accepts Section 8 and then she had called me and she said: “please tell me you take Section 8.” And I said, “we do”. And just from then on, her whole attitude about life and moving and things were just getting better for her just by me telling her, yeah, we accept Section 8. And just to see her go from being severely depressed, not knowing where she was going to go and to be able to see her happy and striving and having somewhere to go at the end of this month, to live, is amazing.

Studio IX:             Can you explain for those who may not know, this Section 8, the connection, when she asked that?

Chelsea:               Gosh. Section 8 is housing assistance that the government passes out for those who do not make quite enough money or have a whole bunch of kids and rent is just on the last of their priority list. So the government puts you through an application process and you do all those verifications of where all your income is coming from and then they base that off of how much they give you and they take care of your rent until you either pass away or you don't need the Section 8 anymore.

Studio IX:             And programs like yours accept it though there might be other programs that don't.

Chelsea:               Yeah. So there's a lot of housing, a lot of private owners that don't take Section 8. A lot of the high end apartments don't accept Section 8. A lot of the comfortable living situations in Charlottesville, around the town centers or the hospitals, none of these places accept Section 8 and so it's nice to be able to have an apartment complex that's based in the middle of Charlottesville where they can still be on the bus line to get every place they want to go without having to make all these crazy connections to get back in town because a lot of these people that have Section 8 don't have vehicles too. So, it's hard for them to get back and forth.

Studio IX:             Yeah. And is Section 8 maxed out?

Chelsea:               Yes. Section 8 has a two and a half year waiting list.

Studio IX:             Oh wow. Okay.

Studio IX: Can you share an aspect of your work that might surprise people to know?

Chelsea:               The amount of paperwork. I think I've done more paperwork here than I did at the hospital and just to make sure every little small detail matters. Like if there's a line blank, that whole application has to be redone. Or, if we send something out to them to approve and we missed a date, an initial, a check mark, it's re-do everything. And so it's very stressful and so it's a very attention-to-detail oriented job.

Studio IX:             And when did GEM come about?

Chelsea:               GEM just celebrated their 25-year anniversary. They're based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. They recently started venturing out. They have two hundred and fifty other properties that are all below North Carolina. So now they're starting to venture up to this part of the United States, to see if we can continue to put affordable housing complexes all over the United States.

Studio IX:             That's great to hear.

Chelsea:               We have elderly establishments, we have affordable housing and family, low-income family housing, any type of low-income, low-rent budget-based, we try to take as much government assistance as we can to make sure the rent is affordable in each state that we go into.

Studio IX:             Where do you see things headed in the next 5 to 10 years?

Chelsea:                We’re very hopeful. So Timberland Park is the test child of Charlottesville at this point so if we do really well, we'll probably build another three to four apartment complexes throughout Charlottesville and hopefully I will see myself managing each of those sites.

Studio IX:             Beautiful. Here’s hoping.

Studio IX: What do you like most about being here at Studio IX?

Chelsea:                The quietness. That I can go to my office at 7 o'clock at night, because you know weird people do that, and, work and be able to go in and out and just be in quietness and serenity and be able to hear myself think.

Studio IX:             Did you not have that before?

Chelsea:                No.

Studio IX:             Where were you guys?

Chelsea:                We were at a hotel, using their conference room and so we, you know, had people walking back and forth, cleaning crews and stuff like that. With our job you need quiet space to concentrate and I definitely get that here.

Studio IX:             Being able to sit down with people and to do so whenever you want.

Chelsea:               Yes. Quietly and privately. You don't have to worry about somebody overhearing your personal information and stuff like that.

Studio IX:             That’s it. Thanks again, Chelsea. Greatly appreciate your time.

Chelsea:               Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ALEJANDRO GOMEZ

Studio IX:              Alejandro, Good morning. Thanks for taking a moment to sit down with me.

Alejandro:             Of course. 

Studio IX:              So tell us who you are and what you do?

Alejandro:             My name's Alejandro Gomez. I am a Colombian Virginian. I would like to say that. I was born and raised in Colombia, then came to school in the US, in upstate New York, and my first job was in Virginia, at an organic beef farm in Richmond. I loved Virginia so I always kept that in my mind. I went back to Colombia as I was focused on working in tropical agriculture. Finding ways to make agriculture in Colombia more valuable.

That's when we got into cheese making. We decided that making cheese out of water buffalo milk would be something new. Something that would bring value. That took us a while. We're going to be 10 years into this business in November. 10 years of making cheese in Colombia, and four exporting that cheese to the United States. 2014 was when we started Buf. Buf is a branch of our company in Colombia, dedicated to sales in the US and representing the brand and the product. So we make the best out of tropical Colombia into the markets of the world.

Studio IX:              What do you enjoy most about the work?

Alejandro:             I enjoy when I open someone's fridge and our cheese is in there. It's the best harvest of all because it means you are in people's lives, and it means they are sharing it. So we might do logistics and make cheese and deal with water buffalo and be on a horse and deal with grass and trucks and cheese in planes, but once you finally go to a friend's house, or a friend goes to a friend's house and they open the fridge and they see Būf in there and they send a picture, I think that's the best reward. 

Studio IX:              What are you passionate about? Does it play a part in what you do?

Alejandro:             Definitely. I'm passionate about agriculture. I was born as the son of a farmer who always took prices as the given. For him, prices were given, but my passion was to set a price for things we were doing, so my partners and I, that's what we did with buffalo milk. We also have another endeavor with chocolates in that we take cacao pods and make that into chocolate in Colombia. We are not selling cacao beans at a price that the market gives you, but we're selling chocolate at a price we want to put on the product. So I'm passionate about adding value to that side of agriculture that has always been very stable and maybe neutral. 

I'm also passionate about being outside. I really enjoy the outdoors and that's why I enjoy my job as well. But I enjoy being here in Charlottesville, because the outdoors are amazing. I love being in the mountains, camping, going on a bike ride, on a motorcycle ride. I just took a very nice ride to North Carolina, and that really feeds my passion.

Studio IX:             Can you share a memorable story with us? A pivotal moment?

Alejandro:             Yes. One of the hardest and most memorable moments was when we presented our cheese to Whole Foods. We got an appointment through a friend who also had a startup company with cured meats and salamis, so he got us an appointment with the cheese buyer. We knew nothing about her. We walked up to her office in Austin. We had a one-hour appointment. Once we walked in, she says, "Okay, guys, we're going to do this in 15 minutes. I've got no time and I never purchase cheese from South America, but I'm just being polite with my friend. So let's get it done." 

And my partner, who's from Virginia, said, "Okay, Alejo, tell her the story," and he just throws me that ball. And that was the elevator pitch that I was not prepared to give, but it worked out. I said, "Cathy, if you're not going to be the one who buys this cheese, someone else is going to do it and you're going to regret it. Just taste this. It's amazing." And she did. The meeting was two hours long and five more people came into the meeting. She was making videos, and the next month, she was in Colombia, on a horse, visiting our farms. So I think that was the tipping point for our business and for our endeavor. We had no customers at that point. It was the first time we presented.

Studio IX:              What year was that?

Alejandro:             2014. April 14th. 

Studio IX:              What's an aspect of your work that might surprise people to know? 

Alejandro:             They're surprised about water buffalo. People don't really understand that water buffalo are not bison, or that cheese made out of water buffalo milk is not going to be spicy or powerful. It's surprising to see that even the most knowledgeable people in the food industry just don't understand that water buffalo is another species, different from a cow, different from a bison. And that's what we enjoy telling the story about. But interestingly enough, everyone knows water buffalo cheese is the good stuff, so that's why it's not a hard sale.

Studio IX:              Where do you see yourself and the industry in five to 10 years?

Alejandro:             We are not going to be much bigger than we are now. It's a limited supply. We just need to be where people are the happiest, and that's getting to the right customer, people who really value your product. So I see Buf being sold in most of the specialty retailers and basically the specialty restaurants in the area. Also, since we have nationwide distribution, soon we will be sold in many of the bigger cities in the United States. 

In five years we see Buf as one of the dairy companies in Colombia who will change the agricultural side of the country. We've seen it already, people who are becoming our suppliers, people who work for our company who are seeing the world in a different way. We're proud of becoming, in that sense, the ambassadors of Colombia in the United States with a good story to tell and a beautiful product to share, as opposed to other stories about Colombia that are not fun, especially for a Colombian. If you were born during times of political unrest, if you were born during the whole FARC thing. When you bring something beautiful, delicious and happy about Colombia, I think that changes the image of a country and therefore, what you perceive of it and its future.

Studio IX:              Well said.

Studio IX:              What do you enjoy most about working here, about being at Studio IX?

Alejandro:             I'm just so productive here, compared to my shared space back home. I have a shared space there because I have this one here, and I really envy what Alexa has here. I'm always like, "Oh, Alexa" you're here, being able to concentrate, everything works, you're next to your house. It’s amazing. I enjoy the different areas and environments through out Studio IX. You have the meeting rooms. You also have the gallery and the café. You have your own space, so that makes it variable without you losing concentration. It also allows you to meet with people and do it in an informal but practical way, so that gives productivity. 

I also enjoy seeing people doing other stuff around me. If I had just one type of business around me, it would be dull, but if you have other people who you can talk to and ask questions and just debate stuff, I think it just brings more richness to your day to day. Because work is one thing, but then you're living it, so make it a lifestyle. I think that's what Studio IX is. It becomes a lifestyle that's your home away from home.

Studio IX:              Beautiful.

Alejandro:             Yeah.

Studio IX:              You crushed it. 

Alejandro:             Was it it good?

Studio IX:              Yes.

Alejandro:             Thank you.

Studio IX:              Thank you, Alejandro.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: MBUGUA KARANJA

Studio IX:                           You ready to dive in?

Mbugua Karanja:                Every doctor says that this won't hurt. 

Studio IX:                        It won't hurt a bit. (laughter) We'll start off easy. Tell us who you are and what it is you do.

Mbugua Karanja:                Cool. My name is Mbugua Karanja, I’m a Business Architect, now with AT&T after they acquired DIRECTV. I help businesses get better at using technology to transform themselves. That’s essentially what I do.

Studio IX:                            What do you enjoy most about it? About the work itself?

Mbugua Karanja:                Making sense of business problems and aligning that to IT. Typically what happens is, you talk to a tech guy. He's got a solution for the problem from his bag of tricks. Most business folks are thinking about the immediate problem, the tactical; “I'm going to fix this right now. I've got to get my sale out the door”, which is great. Those are real world problems. 

What I do is step back and look at those problems from the perspective of what everyone is trying to do. It could be, for example, business unit strategy or goals for the year and I break that down using particular formats and tools to “paint pictures about the business” that reveal the actual problems and relate them to potential tech solutions. If that's what the issue is, I also then put together a plan to address that problem with a price tag to it. I basically help translate business speak to IT and vice versa. I'm like the Rosetta Stone between business and IT. So I enjoy making sense of that and figuring out problems and working with people. 

Studio IX:                  What are you passionate about, and does it relate to your work in some way?

Mbugua Karanja:                Yes it does. I'm passionate about the power of technology to unlock human potential. I saw a great quote the other day that really resonated with me, which was "Talent and skills are equally distributed, but opportunity is not." More and more today, opportunity translates to access to technology. We've got many divides in this world, but here's a new one, the technology divide. My passion is about bridging that technology divide for different parts of the world. I haven't found a way to make that lasting impact yet, but that's sort of my next thing. 

Studio IX:                                Where are you from?

Mbugua Karanja:                 Ah, yes. Kenya.

Studio IX:                                And how did you get here? Had you already started doing this work before arriving in the states.

Mbugua Karanja:                Interesting story, that.  No, I haven’t quite had the nine lives of a cat, but I think I've reinvented myself several times. I was doing something very different before.

Studio IX:                              Talk a bit about it.

Mbugua Karanja:                Ok. Let's rewind a little bit. I'm from Kenya and I came over for my MBA. The plan was, I'll pick the US, never been to the US, been everywhere else mostly. I'll take a two year MBA because I think one year is too quick, so didn't want to go to Europe. Just take my two years, time to press the reset button and once again reinvent myself. Came to CA and the two years went by in a flash, and then I kind of figured out that I did need a job. That happened and I'm still here. So, years later I am still here through a combination of blessings, grace, opportunities and choice. Started a family, formal immigration and all that stuff. 

Studio IX:                            Can you share a memorable story? Something that stands out to you.

Mbugua Karanja:                Yeah, let me see. There are a few. Back in CA I went to a dealers’ conference. And what those dealers do is sell our products in the marketplace. They're not employed by the organization, they have their own businesses, and they basically said, I want products and sell them to make money. They may like the products, but they're really in it for a business. 

So, I had just gotten engaged on this transformation initiative and I spent the previous few weeks listening to stories of the problems we have and what needs to be resolved. I sat down and had lunch with this business owner which led to several meetings afterwards. His version of what the issues are, and what we thought they were, was just night and day. What we thought were their priorities and problems, they couldn't care less about. He helped demystify for me, just how absolutely necessary it is to take the time to ask the right questions of the right people and understand the real problem. Don't come to the table with a solution. Come with an open inquiring mind and a willingness to learn and be willing to take criticism. He had quite some things to say about us, our products, and our focus. The disconnect couldn't' have been wider So it led to very interesting conversations about enlisting their help in assessing what the real problems and the plans needed to bridge that divide.

Studio IX:                             What's an aspect of your work that people might be surprised to know about?

Mbugua Karanja:                I don't think this is surprising, but to me, every so often, I remind myself just how much easier work would be if it wasn't for people.

Studio IX:                            If it wasn't for people?

Mbugua Karanja:                Yeah.

Studio IX:                             They're complex. 

Mbugua Karanja:                It's amazing isn't it? It never ceases to fascinate me. We're just complex creatures, right? We've got our own agendas. We've got our own myopic views and it takes a lot of hand holding, persuading and influencing. I depend a lot on soft skills to get my work done. Extracting information, sharing, analyzing that information and playing it back. That's amazing and people are complex. 

Studio IX:                              Where do you see yourself in the next five to 10 years? Where do you see your industry?

Mbugua Karanja:                Myself, hopefully I'll have pivoted to a place where I'm able to address what I'm calling the technology divide. Identifying a way to insert myself into that conversation. It's a passion of mine, just because I think it holds back vast sections of the world population. I'm not going to try to go after world problems necessarily, but I do want to make an impact It's interesting when we run it at a very local level e.g. C4K. Seeing their projects and what they can do. That's opening their minds and ours to all the possibilities. They wouldn't have access to that perhaps. That's an example of closing that digital divide, is what I mean.

The industry is going to be an interesting place. There's this famous quote in the industry going back years that software was going to basically end up running a lot of our lives. I think we're already there, and what we'll begin to see, or continue to see in some sense, is a fragmentation of the industry as everybody goes out to get a slice of us as consumers. We'll begin to see also a merging between the experience we have as consumers with our technology and what large corporations expect in the way they do day to day businesses. Expect to see more and more of that. 

I expect to see entry barriers being lowered as it becomes easier to start a business but also a lot more challenging competition, and just the speed of business really to pick up. 

Studio IX:                               How do you think we as humans will adjust? It does feel that things are speeding up more and more. Do you see how that impacts the quality of work that's done, but also the quality of people's experience?

Mbugua Karanja:                I think we'll find that universally, we're probably going to have an inconsistent response to it, and here's why. There's usually different sets of values. One of the things that's playing right now, is people are slowly realizing that if you're getting a product or a service for free, most likely you're the product. That's why our data is so much in demand by all these tech places. There's going to be a push back against this. 

We've seen Europe lead the way in some pretty aggressive action of rules and legislation that basically tell the tech giants what they can and cannot do. This is a hard sell in the US in my view. It’s going to be difficult to get legislators to decide what US businesses can and cannot do. At the same time, I think there's still a reckoning to be had, because we have let technology get away. I think there's going to be that tension at play, and unfortunately, the people we are asking to cure us, are the ones who infected us in the first place. We are no better because we continue taking the poison because it tastes so good. It hurts so good. That’s a reference to an old song by the way. And so, we continue drinking from it and it's a little tough to stop. 

The whole disinformation thing is going to continue being a big deal. And we really have to get over those two things if we're going to have constructive dialog of what to do. But we have let the genie out of the bottle, I don't know how we put it back. I don't know how we do that. 

Studio IX:                             Yeah, I don't either.

Studio IX:                              Final question. What do you enjoy about working here? About being at Studio IX?

Mbugua Karanja:                The people. Fun story about how I ended up being here. When we moved to Charlottesville, you can blame my wife for that, it was her idea. Moved here, she's got her job over at UVA. I'm doing my work from home thing which was remote. She'd come back home, and she walks in through the door, and I’m like, okay, that's it, we're going out because I've been indoors all day talking to myself or being on the phone with other people. I just want to get away and have that interaction, but she just wants to sit at home. She's been out there doing her thing. So, there was this healthy tension for us, I'm not going to say it saved our marriage, but it didn’t hurt it. That’s a good tag line for you by the way…” StudioIX will save your marriage”. 

Studio IX:                              Save your marriage. Beautiful.

Mbugua Karanja:                Because now I don't have to work at home, I can come in, have a place to work, I can meet different people. I don't talk shop with them because I don't work with them, I get to learn about different things and listen to problems. That's been really cool. I have to confess, I don't know that I've done as much, taken advantage of that as much as I thought I would, or as I should really, but the promise is there, and I've done that a little bit. That's really cool actually. And now every time I go to a different city to work for whatever reason, co working space is my go to thing, and it's very interesting the things you learn. It's opened my eyes. I didn't even know such a thing existed. 

Studio IX:                               I didn't either before I came here. 

Mbugua Karanja:                It's fascinating, A worldwide phenomenon.

Studio IX:                               That's all I got for ya.

Mbugua Karanja:                Really?

Studio IX:                               Yeah.

Mbugua Karanja:                Wow.

Studio IX:                                See. Painless. (laughter)

MANAGER SPOTLIGHT: GREG ANTRIM KELLY

This month we turn our attention to Studio IX's Manager & Curator, Greg Antrim Kelly. We were curious to know a bit more about what makes Greg tick. Member, Joa Garcia sat down with Greg to ask him a few questions collected from our members.

Studio IX:             Why did you choose Charlottesville, and why do you continue to stay in Charlottesville? What's the main draw for you?

Greg Antrim Kelly:             I think in a way, Charlottesville chose me. I actually moved here somewhat on a whim. I came through on a cross-country road trip after finishing my degree. A close friend had a room for rent. I moved in, set up a studio, got a job at the Mudhouse and 25 years later I'm still here. It’s a beautiful place but it's really more about the people and the community for me. There’s something special here. Something that’s always felt like home.

Studio IX:             What inspires you on a daily basis?

Greg:             People. I guess to be more specific, their stories, their lives, who they are fascinates me. But what I find equally compelling is what separates us, what keeps us at a distance from one another and from ourselves. So the thing I'm most inspired by is seeing where the connections lie. 

Studio IX:             Tell me a little about your art career, and how you combine the different kinds of work that you do? And what exactly is involved in your artwork?

Greg:                I was trained as a visual artist. My degree was in ceramics and art history but I also spent many years mentoring and teaching, working with youth, working in galleries and museums. When I graduated I pretty quickly steered away from a more traditional path as an artist — that of getting a gallery, selling work, etc... My focus wasn't so much about making and selling work as much as making those connections, serving a greater purpose, giving back. So a lot of what excites me and drives me as an artist is largely driven by what goes on outside of the studio. The ‘curatorial’ side of it, as I like to call it. The more civic, community driven, social justice and organizing aspects, which I'm able to do, in part, here at Studio IX. Supporting the work of other artists and organizations, getting to know them, better understand their efforts and their process is a big part of what feeds me. The arts, in a way, are just the language that I speak and that I'm most fluent in. It's the tool that I can use most effectively to find those connections.

Studio IX:         Looking back on your years to date, is there anything that you'd like a do-over on?

Greg:           I wish I'd played organized sports.

Studio IX:             What did you want to be when you grew up, and how does that compare to what you're doing now?

Greg:           I don't think I ever really questioned it because I was always doing it. Being an artist is just the thing that I did, and I had unwavering support from my family and those around me. So the bigger question for me has always been less about what I do outwardly and more about what's going on inwardly. My ambitions, I think, are far more spiritually based than they are financially or career driven. 

Studio IX:            Why do you think that is?

Greg:            It probably goes back to that basic ingredient for me: connection. My desire to enlarge the playing field, to have a richer sense of 'home', to have others feel that as well. The spirit is the most fertile ground for it. Whatever's going on outwardly is just sort of an extension of what's going on inside. So it made sense to put my attention there. 

Studio IX:             That makes sense. What's your secret super power?

Greg:            My secret super power. Well, I don't know that I have a name for it, but I think I'm pretty good at what I guess I would call 'breaking a horse'. Softening the walls of those who are guarded, angry, who most consider to be assholes. In a strange way, I kind of admire them (laughter).

Studio IX:            That's a really good trait to have.

Greg:             Yeah. When it works. (laughter)

Studio IX:           What do you do in your down time?

Greg:             Read, watch documentaries, get outdoors, drink coffee, talk to people, strike up conversations.

Studio IX:            What is the meaning of life?

Greg:               Good coffee? (laughter) - but seriously, to love one another and to appreciate and respect what's here. That's all.

Studio IX:           What's your favorite part of working at IX?

Greg:             My favorite part would have to be the people - which is why I love the job. I get to interface with all of you each day. And also working with James and his vision for Studio IX and Vault Virginia. It's very much in line with the work I'd been doing before landing here, and the work that I continue to do outside of Studio IX.  So that's exciting to me.

Studio IX:             What's your favorite band?

Greg:            Wilco.

Studio IX:             What kind of music is that?

Greg:            I guess you'd call it alt country rock? but they kind of take from everything.

Studio IX:            Have you gone to any cool concerts lately?

Greg:            I just saw an amazing concert at The Garage on Friday night.

Studio IX:            What's The Garage?

Greg:            It's a venue here in town that's literally a garage,  adjacent to the park that has many names, that has the Lee statue in it.

Studio IX:           Okay, yeah.

Greg:            Yeah, good friends. One opened, the other one headlined, and then another one jumped in with the one who headlined and played a few songs.

Studio IX:            Nice.

Studio IX:            What kind of music was that?

Greg:            That was more singer/songwriter - guitar, keyboards, cello kinda stuff. Wes plays cello and sings, Diane plays guitar and keys and sings, Guion plays guitar and sings.

Studio IX:             Wow. I love music, but I'm not musically inclined. I have a keyboard and a guitar, but I can't move my fingers like that.

Greg:             It's hard.

Studio IX:            Doesn't work for me.

Greg:             Yeah, it's very hard. 

Studio IX:            That's why there's no way I could ever be an artist because I can't think like that.

Greg:            We'll work on it. (laughter)

Studio IX:            Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Greg:             That's a tough one because I live so much in the moment, but I would say that if the last ten years are any baromoter of what's to come, I would probably still be committed to the work that I am now and hopefully in this community. Much of that has to do with our young people, race relations & social justice - and there's plenty of that to do.

Studio IX:            Yeah.

Greg:           As long as I don't get priced out or relocated due to other circumstances, I'll probably still be here doing exactly what I'm doing now..

Studio IX:            Yeah, it seems like you're really happy with what you're doing now. 

Greg:           It feels that way.

Studio IX:           What's the best thing you read this summer?

Greg:           What's stayed with me the most are the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A collection called 'Strength to Love'. I've also been carrying around a steady stream of Irish writers/poets. Moya Cannon, Michael Longley, an off-beat short story writer named Kevin Barry. 

Studio IX:            What animal would you like to come back as and why?

Greg:            I don't know if I would come back as this, but this image has always stayed with me. When I was eight years old, I went to the aquarium in Chicago, and I was staring at a seal who was laying at the bottom of the aquarium. Just laying against the wall like this (mimics a drunk man leaning against a wall), holding their breath, I guess, just chilling out. I thought, "It would be cool to be a seal."

Studio IX:           Where is your family from? Where were you born? Where's your hometown?

Greg:                  My dad's side is Irish, surprise surprise. Mom's side is French-mutt. I was born and raised in Illinois. Grew up in Champaign-Urbana. We moved to St. Louis when I was eleven.

Studio IX:            Nice. I love Champaign actually. 

Greg:             Oh, yeah? I think that's another reason I love Charlottesville is that it reminds me a lot of Champaign. 

Studio IX:           What's a risk that you've taken?

Greg:            Probably following this crazy notion that simpler and slower is a better way to live. Trusting my insticts around it. I don't consider it as much a risk now but I think in the past I questioned it a lot. Investing in something that wasn't necessarily a step-by-step kind of thing but was guided more by curiosity, intuition, inspiration, a passion for things. — trusting that it would evolve, that it would work out. That felt risky at the outset.

Studio IX:            If you could be in the Olympics, what sport would you pick and why?

Greg:                 Rowing.

Studio IX:            Oh, why?

Greg:            I just love it - though I've never done it.

Studio IX:            It's so difficult.

Greg:          Yeah, I sit on a machine at the gym all day, but I haven't been in a scull or an 8. I just think it's beautiful. And I think it would be an amazing feeling - being in something that is totally silent and feeling that much power when you put your oar in and there's eight of you pulling.

Studio IX:            If you were in a roller derby or a bowling league, what would you call yourself?

Greg:           Oh god, what would I call myself? What would you call me?

Studio IX:             I don't know. I was trying to think of what I would call myself, and I don't even know.

Greg:          Yeah. I mean Spaz would be good because people consider me to be so mellow.

Studio IX:             Yeah, that's true. (laughter)

Studio IX:            Is there anything else that you'd like to say?

Greg:            Closing thoughts?

Studio IX:            Yeah, that we haven't gone over.

Greg:           I don't think so. Just happy to be here.

Studio IX:          We're happy to have you.

Greg:             Thank you.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: CARISSA PHILLIPS

Studio IX:                                

Good morning, Carissa. So let's jump in. Tell us who you are and what it is you do?.

Carissa Phillips:                   

I'm Carissa Phillips. I work for Campaign Monitor and we're originally based out of Australia. I've been there now eight years this month. I started out doing customer support. It's just a little more technical than your normal "click here, go there" kind of customer support for software. And that kind of grew into what is called deliverability, which most people have no idea what that means. So in the email world, email marketing is what we do. Deliverability is increasing engagement for our subscribers. Customers with 100,000 people on your mailing list or 3 million people on their mailing list, they're always looking to get more opens, more clicks, more people to read their emails or click on the ads. So I'm the one that helps them figure out how to do more with that. And then also the delivery side of emails. When things break and they get blacklisted and suddenly Yahoo doesn't like their mail anymore, I'm the one that comes in and figures out what happened and what we’ve got to do to fix it. So that's all kind of within deliverability and email. 

Studio IX:                                

What do you enjoy about it? 

Carissa Phillips:                   

I really like working with customers. I enjoy both the people aspect of my job, but the technical part as well. Going into the weeds and having to test things over and over again, or look at somebody’s whole email program, the whole life cycle of a subscriber. For instance, when one goes to the website and signs up, what might they be expecting to receive. And then at different stages of how engaged they are throughout. Receiving those emails and then why would they unsubscribe or complain at the end. So I really like looking at the whole life cycle and the technical parts of it. 

Studio IX:                                

What are you passionate about? Does that play a role in what you do? 

Carissa Phillips:                   

We’re just starting to get passionate about it because it's just email and I'm not really keen on marketing - but the cool thing that my job also entails is a lot of anti spam, anti abuse type stuff. So I'm able to be part of a community that not just hunts down the spammers that are going to send you unsolicited mail, but hunts down the spammers who are doing malicious things, like stealing people's identity or putting malware on your computer that totally locks it down until you send them a lot of money to some one - all different kinds of things. I get to be a part of that community, which is a big bonus for my work. I kinda feel like I get to protect the public from what they don't know is ready to come get them, but that's just my passion in general, outside of work. 

Studio IX:                                

Let's revisit that in a bit. I'd like to hear more about how your personal-life passions overlap with your work life. 

Is there a memorable story you can share? A breakthrough, a turning point, something that happened that stood out? 

Carissa Phillips:                   

Yes. I have lots. So because I was a remote employee from the very beginning, I was one of the first, I think, four employees in the US. So they didn't know what to do with us because they were all based in Australia and what, over time, started to happen was they would have meetups. We would go to a place that was sort of in between Australia and the US, which looked like New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii. We got to go to some really great places and the company would spare no expense. Four days all together in these luxurious resorts, open bar all day, and just out of control. Yeah. And so, I think in that I saw the generosity of the two guys who started the company. If you had just looked at them, you would have thought they were just normal Australian surfers. And they were. They would go out in the morning and they would catch a wave before coming into the office. They were always tan and in shape, but they also knew from the very beginning that the people were the most important part and so they gave and gave and gave to us in a thousand different ways. But those meetups were pretty pivotal for me to see that a company can really love and value their employees. 

Studio IX:                                

What's an aspect of your work that people might be surprised to know? 

Carissa Phillips:                   

Well when you say email and you talk about spammers and things, that's one side of my job, but I do get to work with some really cool brands. I've worked with Huff Post and Oprah and Wall Street Journal and some big publishers and I like working with their teams. The email world brought me into working on a daily basis with teams like that, whereas I wouldn't have had that kind of access otherwise. 

Studio IX:                                

Where do you see yourself headed? Do you have a sense of how you're work and the industry are evolving? 

Carissa Phillips:                   

Yeah, so I've avoided management all of these years. It's been offered and I've turned it down every time. So now it's kind of inevitable. I have to have people underneath me that I'm responsible for. That probably starts this month or next. I have to learn those kinds of skills. The kind of "eating last” mentality of caring for these other people, letting them be the ones that get the five star reviews from customers and letting them have the last say on what kind of resources we are able to get. That’s happening very soon. And as an industry I think there's more abuse happening now more than ever. And I think those of us who are able to work in anti-abuse community, now that data is so fluid. That work is going to be all the more important. 

 Studio IX:                               

You're talking about hacking, malware, the people coming in and corrupting systems.?

Carissa Phillips:                   

Yeah. So even like espionage kind of stuff happens through email. So if you are somebody who is connected high up in government or within a large corporation, email might be an avenue that somebody would try to put software on your computer to watch you, to watch what comes through your inbox, whatever. So there's a lot, a lot of that that's happening.  

Studio IX:              

So I'd like to revisit  how this might play into your personal passions. Could you talk a bit more about that?

Carissa:                  

Yeah. So I've thought about it. I thought about how do I sum it all up if I had to bundle it. Being consistently pro-life, I think, is how I would sum it up and consistency in terms of all of life, not just unborn life, not just last-of-days life, but quality of life in between and individuals who we criminalize. 

That kind of started, I don't know, 10 years ago when we had lived in Turkey, and we had lived in a little town, a part of Istanbul, but it felt like a little town. We didn't realize that all of the people that were working in the shops below our apartment buildings were being trafficked for labor. We had no clue, and we lived there for two-and-a-half years and had no idea. We were blind to it. So then, coming back to the States and realizing oh my gosh, there were bars on the windows so they couldn't escape. Then feeling like every piece of clothing that touched me was sick because that's what they were making. They were making clothes. Then I didn't want any clothes on me that were made by somebody who was forced to work.

So then that opened my eyes to more systemic injustices that we have in terms of all kinds of labor.  But then there's also this race piece that I was totally blind to, growing up in middle-class white suburbia.

Studio IX:              Where'd you grow up?

Carissa:                 Dallas, North Dallas.

Studio IX:              Can you say a bit more about that?

Carissa:                  

Yeah, so the race piece.  I wanted to go back to what happened in this country. I wanted to hear the history again because I didn't get it right the first time. Then seeing that lynching leads, really over time, to capital punishment and being murdered by the State. So then I got really into abolition of the death penalty. So yes, being consistently pro-life is very, very hard. 

Studio IX:              So these things are separate from your day job? Or do you see a connection?

Carissa:                  

Yes, separate but it did overlap last summer at just the right point in time. So I was working with HuffPost at the time, and we were talking almost daily for a little while. So their team knew I was here in Charlottesville. Then August 12th happened. I didn't know how to come into the meeting the next time that we had scheduled. I just didn't know how to be present. It was so cool because they were so excited to tell me that their team had stayed up for two nights in a row. All their developers, all their marketing folks, everybody were pulling together this mini-website that they had created to track hate and to make it available for people to see that this is widespread, this is systemic. Because they knew I was in Charlottesville and we had been working on a HuffPost thing, it was just a perfect overlap of being encouraged that work life and personal life sometimes, sometimes can merge.

Studio IX:              And in poignant ways, it seems. 

Carissa Phillips:     Yes.

Studio IX::             What do you enjoy about being here at Studio IX?

Carissa Phillips:                   

The community. Absolutely. I love that we have our little area on the side and we all know each other's names and we will catch up every now and again on how the kids are doing or who's vacation was where. I love that I can kind of have water cooler talk, but it doesn't affect my job. Like if I need to vent, I could, but I don't have to be careful about who's listening. I really like that a lot. I was at home for five years and it was rough. So this is like freedom.

Studio IX:               Thanks so much, Carissa!

Carissa Phillips:      You're very welcome.

.