Say hello
Vert Blog

Meet Jason, the Newest Vertbag!

Jason Lehmkuhle
Written by Jason Lehmkuhle  February 15, 2016

Here at Vert, our roots run fairly deep in the South. But as we grow, we’re always looking to bring in more top talent from wherever we can find it. Our new Front-End Interaction Design Lead, Jason Lehmkuhle, has lived all over this great nation before calling the Peach State home. So who is this wizard of all things web? We’ve come up with a few fun questions for him to *run* through. Seriously though, the guy’s a running machine.

Jason Lehmkuhle | Director, Interactive Design

Where are you from?
Here and there. I’m not trying to be coy. It’s a complicated question for me. I was born in the Mid-South (Charlottesville) and was raised in the Northeast (Rhode Island) and the Midwest (Missouri, Iowa). I came “here” directly from the Land of 10,000 (frozen) Lakes (Minnesota).

What do you hope to bring to Vert?
I hope to bring additional knowledge, skill and bandwidth to create rich interactive experiences… and my lunch at least three days a week (New Year’s resolution).

Do you have any pets?
My wife has three cats. The relationship is tenuous, but as long as I put food in their bowls twice a day they have agreed to let me continue living with them.

If you could only use one social network for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Twitter. If it has the power to overthrow regimes, it could certainly help source why I have been banned from all other social networks.

What is one fact about you that no one would believe?
I finished in the top ten of both the Boston and New York Marathons.

Tell us a little bit about your life before Vert.
Last year my wife Kristen and I decided to move to Atlanta to be closer to family. We met a dozen or so years ago in Minneapolis out of individual circumstances and competitive running. There was a training group centered in the Twin Cities that we both ran with for three Olympic cycles. While I never made an Olympic team, I trained part-time and worked part-time as a contract/freelance web designer for the better part of a decade until I retired in 2012. Since then I have worked for a digital marketing agency and then at a startup called Sport Ngin, a software platform for youth and amateur sports organizations.

What’s your favorite animated gif?
Prefer to make my own (see below), either the old fashioned way (Photoshop) or with Homerfy.

Meet Jason | Director of Interactive Design

Speaking of, how do you pronounce gif?

I don’t understand the debate about this. It’s short for “graphics interchange format.”

What was the first concert you attended?
I snuck in to Lollapalooza (v1) at the Riverport Amphitheater outside of St. Louis to watch Alice in Chains and Primus.

What are your 3 most recently used emoji?
🍺🍺😑

As a transplant, what’s your favorite thing about Atlanta so far?
Aside from the fact that I comfortably wore shorts while sitting outside on Christmas eve, it has all of the cultural and lifestyle advantages of living in a big city like New York, Chicago or LA (great restaurants, entertainment, etc…), but you can actually afford to live here.

What’s the last TV show you binge-watched?
Silicon Valley

What’s your spirit animal?
Ralph Wiggum

What do you think about Zayn leaving One Direction?
My thoughts: Is ‘Zayn’ a dude? Is this his given name? Are his parents from Southern California?

Who is your favorite Minion?
I prefer my Minions to remain a homogeneous group of laboratory-created entities void of individual personalities, and, in that sense, they are ‘all’ my favorite.

Jason Lehmkuhle

Jason Lehmkuhle

Jason joined the Vert team from Minneapolis where he designed and built websites professionally, ran marathons competitively and ice-fished occasionally. As the Director of Interactive Design Lead, Jason oversees the creation of rich interactive experiences on apps, websites and other digital media designed and built for Vert clients.