Just like a baby, we’ve had a growth spurt over the last few years. WebBabyShower has grown from a friend’s idea for an expecting mother into a distributed global team connecting thousands of families. Here are the people who made it happen.
Kate Weare & Kurt Perschke
Owners
Kurt & Kate know from experience what it’s like to have family spread across the country and beyond. Both have had active careers as touring artists and spent 20 years in New York building their professional lives far from family.
Their daughter first joined them on tour in Belgium when she was only 3 months old. They almost didn’t make the trip as they discovered the day before the flight that, yes, babies need passports! As brand new parents, it had never occurred to them they might have to prove she was theirs. That baby passport saw heavy use as she toured 7 countries with mom and dad before the age of 3.
Founded in 2005, WebBabyShower is the very first online baby shower service. Kate & Kurt took over the company in 2017 as they were looking for a more home-based life with their new daughter. They understood the complicated lives of modern parents, the need for such a service, and feel aligned in a business whose goal is connecting families with joy.
The company has expanded significantly from those early days, and continues to be the category leader in virtual baby shower services.
David Le
Chief Operating Officer
David is responsible for executing our current business strategy and oversee the day-to-day operations and development teams. Previously he was a consultant at Anthroware in Asheville, where he led app development projects. He’s a managing member of The Lang Thang Group in Cincinnati where he’s a founder of award-winning restaurants. He’s been a Director at the Garretson Resolution Group, and manager on the production planning team at Toyota, where he worked as an engineer for 10 years. He has an MS in industrial engineering and a JD in law. He is looking forward to getting back to rolling in the Gracie Barra Jiu-jitsu studio.
Corinna McLeod
Marketing & Operations Manager
Corinna is a British ex-pat living in the mountains of North Cackalacky with her husband, two cats, and two dogs. Loves hiking, running, sound engineering, music, and all the food. This year she plans on running 1,000 miles in the hills of Asheville.
Slavi Marinov
Senior Developer
Slavi likes swimming, dancing bachata & kizomba and is passionate about business & creating easy to use software solutions that tackle tough problems.
He is also the founder of Orbisius and qSandbox.
Michelle Salvaña
Website Manager
Michelle is a Filipino who graduated in 2019 and likes to try new things for experience and real-world knowledge. One of her hobbies is learning the Korean language as she enjoys watching Korean movies and listening to their music.
Ilya Marchenko
Front End Developer
Ukrainian WordPress & Frontend geek, father of two kids. Loves sport, traveling, camping, and games.
Jason Lemrond
Lead Product Developer
Jason is a full stack developer and designer and the lead creator of our product’s next version. He is an experienced developer in React and AWS platforms. Jason is also a guitarist in A Brilliant Lie, who had a 50 city tour in 2019, when you could still do that kinda thing.
Michaela McKinney
Customer Service Lead
Michaela is an American living in rural Alabama with her husband, cat, dog, and 4 reptiles. Loves video games, reading, kayaking, and music.
Chelsey Rothwell
Customer Service Lead
Chelsey is a house plant enthusiast living with her husband, cat and dog in the Appalachian mountains. She loves playing video games, collecting plants, watching Bob’s Burgers and King of the Hill, as well as reading.
Yi Ming Lai
Pinterest Manager
Yi Ming is a millennial Pinterest manager and lifestyle blogger living in Sydney, Australia with her husband. Loves music, books, Zen Tangle and cafe hopping when she is not busy pinning on Pinterest!
Daisy Aylott
Brand Designer
Daisy is a designer at door2door, a mobility start-up in Berlin. She is passionate about design for social change, and the ways that design thinking can have a positive influence on a wide range of sectors. Born and raised between England and Canada, she’s been in Berlin since 2015. Daisy created a completely new look for our brand, including our brand identity for our relaunch. Many of the key illustrations we use across the site and in our themes are Daisy’s.
Katarina Lujak
Lead SEO
Katarina is an experienced content creator turned digital marketer with a focus on SEO. She loves data-led SEO helping clients to improve and grow their online businesses through a holistic approach to their online presence. As a true millennial, she replaces screen time with road biking, traveling, and exploring the woods with her dog.
Alia Savage
Writer
Alia Savage is a freelance content writer and strategist who resides in the Midwest. In her free time, she keeps her nose buried in a good book or enjoys the scenery around her home town.
Amy Cobb
Writer
Amy began writing stories at an early age to entertain her classmates. She grew up to earn a nursing degree but later hung up her stethoscope and scrubs to pursue her first true passion—writing. Today, Amy has published over 200 stories, poems, and articles for both children and adults. She is also the author of two book series for children, Band Geeks, and Libby Wimbley.
Alex Loredo
Writer
Alex Loredo is a freelance writer and blogger. She utilizes her knowledge of event planning and organization to create content that motivates and inspires. When she isn’t writing, she can be found reading, baking, or on a never-ending quest for the world’s best cup of coffee.
Ann Butena
Writer
Dedicated to getting at least 30,000 steps a day, Ann Butenas begins her day around 4:30 each morning so she can run and do her resistance training. Ann successfully (the jury is still out on this!) raised three sons while juggling the demands of entrepreneurship and a writing career. She has been published across multiple platforms and continues to gain velocity in her writing endeavors now that her sons have graduated from college and are out on their own.
Natalie Anastasia
Writer
Natalie is a freelance writer and digital marketer. She’s a native Chicagoan, but currently lives in North Georgia with her husband and three children, who may or may not be feral. (The children, not the husband.) She loves movies (favorite movie is Jurassic Park), music (favorite band is The Beatles), and books (favorite author is Stephen King). Natalie is passionate about social justice and recently served on the leadership team for the Chattanooga Moms for Social Justice.
Advisors
Walter Budzian
Product Growth Advisor
Walter has been privileged to work with growth and product teams at large orgs like Uber, Atlassian, Electronic Arts, and IBM as well as many startups in their earliest days. He’s at Care.com now and consults at Growth Mentor. He lives in Asheville not far from Kurt and lends a hand kicking the tires in surprising ways and asking the right questions.
Tony Gaddis
Branding & Design Advisor
Anthony Gaddis is an American Creative Director & Director. Tony’s Recent video work includes creating Mac Miller ‘Good News‘ video with 50,000,000 views and counting. He also recently created the ‘Time’ video for Hikaru Utada. Tony’s brand work includes Apple iWatch, Borghese, Gucci, and Maserati. His black ops agency work includes 72andSunny, R/GA, HAVAS, Grey, Media Arts Lab, and others. Tony consults us on strategic brand design decisions.