Trust.  Worthy.  Trustworthy.   That is Susan Remar.   She could not fib or exaggerate or inflate even if she wanted to.  She keeps us all straight.  We all have super nice things to say about her, except for one glaring issue:  she never lets Laurel claim Macy’s receipts as “Safety Gear”  (even if the shirt is neon pink). Susan handles all of our internal bookkeeping and external invoicing, and  generally works to keep us financially shipshape.  

Did you know project compliance can be an art form? Take a peek at Sara’s work and you’ll see just how beautiful and elegant project compliance can be.  She can quote PA Guide and CFR Chapter and Verse.   Show her any CEF or RS Means, and she’ll find all the problems.  If you don’t agree with her assessment, there’s no sense trying to prove her wrong.  She’s right.  If you think otherwise, you just don’t understand all the factors yet.  She’s super. She’s good. She’s super good.

Justin comes to us after a career in the Navy in cryptography.  He likes puzzles, and there’s no stopping him til the problem is solved (that’s a nice way of saying he’s stubborn).   Which means, he’s our go to for any problem spreadsheets or software.  We just wave the scent of a problem in front of him like a bloodhound, then we stand back while he sniffs it out.  It. will. be. solved.   He spends his non-puzzle time doing project validations and closeouts.  

Susan pulls from her career of nonprofit leadership to help organizations understand and optimize disaster grants.  Susan’s goal is to help all understand the process, issues, and path forward.  Disaster response and recovery have all kinds of emotions involved, so we’re lucky to have such a calming spirit around.  She always says call anytime, and you know what?  She means it.  

Amanda is a troublemaker. She causes fights. Ruffled feathers surround her. How could this sweet face be the cause of such turmoil? Well, if you must know, we fight amongst ourselves to have Amanda on our projects. She’s a whip smart farm girl that doesn’t know the meaning of quit, lounge, or failure. She’s a quiet multitasking solver. She’s the kind of magic worth fighting for.  

Bryton’s calm demeanor works to keep the rest of us high burners in check.  His projects are always going just fine, he never has any questions, and life is always pretty darn good (as long as there are sports news, sports radio, sports blogs, and well, you know, sports!). He works mostly on state validations and variance packages, but he’s been spotted out in the field doing site visits and damage assessments measuring road and bridge dimensions more than a couple times.  

Sarah has a bionic brain. In a company full of smarties, she’s a super smarty.  It’s kind of humbling.   But the rest of us try to accept and work through it–one way we have found to cope is to give Ms Sarah all the really hard stuff that needs to be done RIGHT NOW.  She works in all areas, but she’s always requested on qa/qc/final reviews, equipment cost codes, and task that require complex thought and high levels of customer service.  

Brandon is a sneak attack in good work.   He’s not going to be the guy in the meeting that talks the talk.   He’ll be the guy off to the side, who you thought had bad manners because he was on his phone the whole time; but come to find out he wasn’t ignoring the meeting scrolling social media–he was just leisurely taking notes in his own Brandonese to-do list format.  And before you know it, he was the guy that walked the walk (keyboard-wise, that is) and Just. Got. It. Done.    Brandon is a great office-mate–he always knows how to fix the printer, set up the starlink, and reset the routers.   Just don’t expect him to offer the “local color” (aka gossip) as he is just terrible at eavesdropping and gossiping, even when asked to please eavesdrop for his boss and repeat every word back to her.   Oh well, no one can be perfect.

Mary joined us after a career in bookkeeping.  She likes everything to have a place, and for everything to be in its place.  So she’s the perfect soul to take the chaos of disaster funding and make all the numbers prim and proper and nice and neat.  She works mostly on the electric cooperative projects, but she pitches in wherever she is needed.  

Kylie  started with us as a small part time job while she was in school.  After a couple of weeks of general office support, we moved her into data entry tasks, then invoices to scan, then costs to validate.  Turns out, she can do about just  anything you put in front of her.  When we realized that our office gopher was really a project verification and validation package machine, we jumped with joy, increased her hours, then told her she could never leave.  Never.

Robert brings his background as writer to expertly validate and review FEMA PA projects.  He seeks to understand and thirsts for information–which is so vital in our need to piece together the who, what, why, when, and how much of project flow, cost reasonableness, and overall eligibility of a project (based on a few scraps of paper, invoices, and timesheets).    He’s helping out on our electric cooperative projects, where he routinely pulls from his technical editing and writing background.  

Brenda has never met a stranger.   We send her to a disaster affected city, and within a few weeks she knows everyone!  Brenda can jump into whatever is needed.  Debris Monitoring?   She can do it.   Site inspections with FEMA?   She’s there with her measuring wheel, sunscreen, and bottled water.   Project Meetings with FEMA PDMG?    She has her agenda ready.  She’s plug and play!

Jonica. Jonica. Jonica.   She’s got it all going on.   She can do the work.  She can teach the work.   She can lead the work.   She can liase with decision makers and leadership about the work.   And in the spare moments of the day, she can draw pictures of fun FEMA policy interpretions.   Did you not know there was such a thing?   Then you haven’t met Jonica.  Jonica is all business.   She’s a master of teams, templates, slack, adobe, pivots, hlookups, nestedifs, and all the softwares; but her basset-mix Dude?  Well, The Dude abides.

Old timers use the term yeoman’s work, I never knew exactly what those old timers meant, so I had to look it up, and what do you know, it describes Kerry:    “very good, hard, and valuable work that someone does especially to support a cause, to help a team.”    Kerry can be counted on to jump from task to task in giant data and documentation pools as each day dictates–she can organize the seemingly unorganizable, put together beautiful grant closeout documents, and deliver a beautifully clean audit report.   Can an audit report be beautiful?   Just ask to see one of Kerry’s, you can judge for yourself.    Now that’s enough of that, we’re embarassing her.

Joe was JoeLo before Jenny from the Block was JLo. He’s awesome. He’s wonderful. He’s awesomely wonderful.   In an organization of get-it-doners, he’s one of the top get-it-doners.  Working mostly in and for Kentucky clients, Joe is full service–damage assessments, FEMA interaction, cost estimates, grant processing, procurement, state funding/payment, closeouts; he does it all.  New team members love being trained by Joe, because, well, he’s Joe.

Randi’s background in state government helps her navigate all the requirements of grants for our clients.   She currently leads our buyout team, coordinating over 200 data and document elements for 300+ homeowners affected by flooding.     How does she keep it all straight?   A good memory, a pleasant phone voice, a big whiteboard, and software, lots and lots of software.

Shawn.   aka The Brain.  He solves things.   He builds things that solve things.   He solves things that build things.   He makes this software talk to that software in nice pleasing software ways.    Once he makes the  the beep beep talk to the boop boop, the rest of us mere mortals can pull up a single web address and be able to see all that we need to see in one location.