Komra Moriko, Creative Director / Analyst

An artist at heart, but one with a brainy, numbers and logic viewpoint, Komra Moriko has been pushing around pixels and code and making web sites for over 10 years.

In 1997, she jumped from print (newspapers, magazines and corporate communcations) to the web by taking the Creative Director position with USWeb in Phoenix during the internet bubble learning by immersion how to make usable web applications.

After the bubble burst, she founded her own design studio, Design 4 Results.

Maybe because no one told her it couldn’t be done, as one of her first projects she delivered, on-time and within budget, a coded-from-scratch custom content management system that included a course catalog, galleries, an online store and a custom shopping cart for the Maine Photographic Workshops. The site served the Workshops for nearly 7 years.

Being a designer who can code is rare. Combine that with being easy to talk to, a good marketer, and an astute businesswoman, and you have a woman who can put a night crawler on a fishing hook—and look good doing it.—Elise Tillinghast

Working with Tig Tillinghast in 2002, she helped launch Watershed Publishing, a profitable company that publishes MarketingVOX, MediaBuyerPlanner and MarketingCharts. She single-handedly designed, developed and maintained these high-traffic ad revenue supported sites during their early growth years.

Concurrently, Tig introduced her to Steve Hall. Steve and Komra had a blast redesigning AdRants, a must-read blog for marketing insiders according to the Wall Street Journal.

Lately, she has been working closely with Madison Avenue Consultants on special projects, and IMPAX Marketing Group in Philadelphia on two key projects:

1. Designing and developing cool blog-based contest sites for Budget Rent a Car.

2. Developing and maintaining a custom shopping cart for Fabulous Stationery that does a completely respectable amount of business every month.

Wanting to expand the number of clients she can serve, in April 2008 Komra founded AvenueVERVE.™ By putting together a super-capable team with powerful open-source platforms she can happily say to prospective clients “Yes, we can do that.”

Otan Logi, Operations Guy

Otan Logi is the guy who makes sure that operations in the company run smoothly and that everything gets done. 

With over 15 years experience working with Fortune 500 corporate executives, he very capably directs the legal, financial and personnel aspects of the company.

Prior to joining AvenueVERVE, Otan founded Tactical Advisor Associates, a consulting firm focused on improving the performance of executives and their teams at companies such as Teradyne, Accelrys, MSC Software, and Hyperdigm Research.

In high school and college, Otan was a star athlete in wrestling, track and football. He played football for Hubie Brown at Fair Lawn, New Jersey high school. Then at UConn Otan’s college football coach was Lou Holtz. As tailback, Otan would get the ball, run like hell and score a lot of points.

You know the kind of guy who is really still a kid at heart? The one who is always finding some way to play and have fun in any situation? Well that’s Otan!—Kevin Ford

When he is not working, his wife catches him looking at themat.com, or joins him to take the dogs out for a run at the park.

Vaughn Draughon, Lead Developer

Since childhood Vaughn has had a keen interest in computers beginning with the first computer game he ever played on an original Mac classic at the age of 5. Two of his uncles were computer programmers and helped encourage his interest in the subject.

By the age of 10 he had found some old abandoned computer hardware that still functioned and set about the task of teaching himself how to program with BASIC. At the age of 11 he had his first introduction to C and C++. In the same year his family signed up for this new fangled information superhighway business and a true child of the internet was born.

Vaughn spent much time with the internet programming community learning and discussing the issues of the day. Soon thereafter he got his own computer and began creating a multi-user roleplaying game system in C++ using object oriented methods.

In 1997 he received his first paid internship at USWeb/CKS where he honed his skills at web programming on professional web pages. After school he worked for his university’s operational support division developing complex internal database driven web applications. Vaughn left the university department to pursue bigger and better things and continues to engineer top quality software for a variety of businesses.

Vaughn has been a musician since the age of 5 as were his father and grandfather before him. His primary instrument is piano though he has also trained on guitar and vocals and has played percussion in his local orchestra. He has played professionally in a variety of rock, jazz and funk groups spanning across the United States.

He has traveled to South America and plans to visit Africa and Asia. He has lived on the east coast, west coast and midwest and continues to seek cool experiences and new people. Vaughn is also an avid rock climber and enjoys nature. He can ascend a 5.10+ on the old-school Yosemite Decimal System if he doesn’t let go with both hands at the same time.

Tim Slavin, Production Designer

Tim is an award-winning writer and internet expert with 20 years experience helping businesses connect with their audiences through traditional and digital media. He has built and rebuilt over 90 internet and intranet websites and email marketing projects as staff and consultant for Reuters, Oxford Health Plans, Wolters Kluwer, TheFineArtofFamily.com, and other businesses.

He has done the full lifecycle, from business idea to planning, interface and information design, programming, database design, promotion, launch, and evaluation of results. He’s an expert in coding web page designs for search optimization and coding html email newsletters.

Since January 2003, he also has published a blog that helps small and medium-sized businesses find and use low-cost internet tools, ReachCustomersOnline.com.

Frustrated with tools available to solo web designers and small businesses, in 2006 Tim started RedWrangler.com to help solo web designers manage their clients and provide their clients with tools to publish web pages, capture Contact Us page leads, and store logins.

When not taking photos of his kids science fair projects and neat Lego aliens, Tim likes to take pictures of clouds, eat out, play pranks, travel, and hike the desert around Cave Creek, Arizona where he lives with his wife and their two kids.

Caimin Jones, Developer

An escapee from the UK radio and television industry, Caimin has been immersed in web development for almost a decade. Originally working in html and Flash, he soon expanded into PHP, MySQL, AJAX and a number of other acronyms.

When not working on web development projects, Caimin enjoys combining his twin interests of photography and travel and can often be found roaming city streets with a Nikon. He lives in Italy with Clare and four laid-back rescue cats.