Our Team

Spencer began experimenting with code as a way to explore art via math in early 2001. He spent the next 6 years working to build The Able Few with Mike before heading to Indiana.

In 2006, after joining a small non-profit, Spencer was exposed to a much geekier flavor of developer culture -- Ruby, git and its underpinnings, Linux. This quickly led to Rails and a whole lot of javascript. Bouncing back and forth between agency life, startups and freelance led to a startling realization that most agencies were struggling to grasp the importance of web software; often times leading to projects that were malformed monstrosities that did little to support existing campaigns, and certainly weren't engaging. He began evangelizing the attributes of Ruby and its seemingly magical ability to allow developers to engineer, participate and remain flexible. The current iteration of The Able Few exploded into existence in 2009 with Ruby at the front of its toolkit.

When Spencer isn't found writing code, he's spending time with his wife and two children, writing and recording music -- and still, every once in a while, making numbers look pretty.

Sitting at the intersection of creative, technical, and social, Michael is in the unique position of being able to serve as a leader, a strategist, and a driving force for a diverse array of projects. In the past decade alone, he has found himself programming and promoting a college radio station, managing recording studios in both St. Louis and New Orleans, writing for national publications and blogs, negotiating recording contracts and touring the country as a musician, managing channel-partner programs for some of the world's largest software companies, teaching audio engineering courses at Webster University, executing several of the area's large scale music festivals and events, and serving as a technical architect and facilitator for countless projects, to name a few.

Often described as a "connector", Michael has a penchant for curating one-of-a-kind experiences both on and off-line. His role as Production Director for The Able Few is to manage the overall agency workload, to create creative technical strategies for our clients, and to advocate for our projects every step of the way — from concept to deployment.

Also serving as the agency's resident "hipster," Mike is tasked with ensuring a strong aspect of relevance for what is played on the office stereo as well as leading by example for a company-wide movement toward plaid. Answering equally to "Mike", "Michael", "Tomko", "Skinny Mike", and — having once finished his taxes from the office — "Turbotax", he can also be found around the agency as the butt of his coworkers' jokes.

Jason has a background in information display, web-development and user-experience design and evaluation. After starting off his career creating data-driven informational graphics for news agencies, he met Spencer at an Indy-based agency. They quickly formed a mutual understanding of what makes up great software and web applications and what simply doesn't work.

Jason focuses on front-end development as well as understanding what users want and how they interact with digital content. After he understood technically how to develop for the web, he wanted to be able to develop for the consumer and earned a Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction in 2011. He believes that the best user experience is one that you don't even think about and that inspiration comes from outside your laptop.

Residing in Indianapolis with his very understanding wife and two labradors, Jason enjoys an array of hobbies, including tinkering with and flying radio controlled helicopters, shooting sporting clays, and snowboarding.

Matt joined the able few in 2012 as an Account Executive. Originally eyeing a career on the creative side of marketing, he started to collect a swiss army knife of skills, including digital and print design, copywriting, social media management, and even a bit of coding. During this process, he discovered his true calling was working with clients to enhance the skills of the development team in place, and getting into the client's head to see where their true needs were. Anyone can build and create, but turning those skills into something productive and starting something big using these talented individuals is what he wanted to do.

Matt sees account management less as three-martini-lunches and more of client/developer translation. He's able to take a written-by-committee executive summary and turn it into something that our developers can use to build a great product. On the flip side, he can take the developer's databases, code, server requirements, and all-around l33t speak, and turn it into progress reports and presentations, showing the client where their money is going and how to use our skills to better their brand.

(Full disclosure: I threw the term l33t speak? in there just to aggravate Bishop).

Matt has lived in St. Louis since he was born, attended Webster University, and is the company's beer and pizza snob. When not being the resident suit, he enjoys nerding out on his various hobbies, including biking (motored and self-powered), messing with tech, and is always starting some new project.