Meet Our Team
Three managers, five team leaders and 30 named Digital units. The experts behind 600+ websites built, hosted and managed, based in Livonia, Michigan.
The Managers Behind AppWT
Ownership and direction. Every decision on this page traces back to one of these three.
Tony Paris
He/Him/His
Founder & Chief Technologist
29+ Years Experience • builds to WCAG 2.2 AAA conformance
Tony Paris began his practice on July 1, 1997 in Flint, Michigan, has operated it as AppWT since 2005, and still writes code, sets the technical standard, and signs off on the work. He pioneered AI Visibility Optimization in Michigan, holds OCSA, CPhT, CPFM, MCP, HCSA and HCWA certifications, and is HIPAA and PCI trained. As AppWT's only Tech Wizard, he is the bridge between the Organic and Digital teams and directs the work of both. Nothing reaches a client that he has not approved.
Emily
She/Her/Hers
Treasurer & Educational Director
Master's in Education
Emily is AppWT's co-owner and Treasurer, responsible for keeping operations structured, transparent, and financially sound. With a Master's in Education and a background in K-12 teaching and leadership, she brings classroom clarity to complex technical topics. She designs the training materials, documentation, and client communication standards that make AppWT's work easy to understand and implement, and she leads the educational direction of AppWT Institute's programs.
Michael
He/Him/His
Brand Strategist & Marketing Director
27+ Years Experience
Michael is a retail-industry veteran and AppWT's Brand Strategist and Marketing Director. He specializes in holistic brand development that connects in-person experience with online presence. He oversees digital marketing and social media, building brand systems that drive real business growth instead of vanity metrics, and aligns messaging, visuals, and campaigns so every touchpoint supports long-term customer relationships.
Our Leadership Team
Four of AppWT's five team leaders appear here, each leading one of the Digital Teams below. Every Digital unit carries its own name, its own job, and a "Digital Team" line on its card. A senior Organic member signs off before any of their work reaches a client.
Robert
He/Him/His
Visual Director & Educational Strategist
22+ Years Experience
Robert blends professional photography and design with a formal background in Graphics Communication. As a Graphics Communication Instructor at Baker College, he has spent years teaching color theory, layout, and visual storytelling, and he applies that directly to client work. He owns AppWT's visual standards and makes sure every design choice serves a clear communication goal.
Shawne
She/Her/Hers
Brand Designer & UI Designer
20+ Years Experience
Shawne is an award-winning brand and UI designer with an M.A. in Graphics, known for turning complex requirements into clear, intuitive experiences. A published author and CEO of Shamonj Gifts LLC, she brings entrepreneurial insight to every project. Her work focuses on inclusive design, keeping every interaction readable and usable across devices, demographics, and accessibility needs.
Aaron
He/Him/His
Security Specialist
23+ Years Experience
Aaron protects client and internal assets from evolving threats. With over two decades in cybersecurity, pentesting, and security information and event management, he designs defenses that meet enterprise expectations even for smaller organizations. He focuses on hardening, threat detection, and incident response, and he is the senior sign-off on every finding before it reaches a client.
Daniel
He/Him/His
Full-Stack Developer & Systems Specialist
6+ Years Experience
Daniel is a full-stack developer who builds and maintains the systems these units run on. A Computer Science graduate with a strong mathematics foundation, he approaches each project with clean architecture, well-structured code, and measurable performance. He handles custom functionality, integrations, performance tuning, and the technical troubleshooting that goes past surface-level fixes.
Our Digital Team 1
Voice hospitality, brand presence, aftercare, contactless payment, live entertainment, and concierge service.
Guest Experience
Senior lead: Shawne
V.A.U.G.H.N.
Team Leader & Voice Hospitality Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
V.A.U.G.H.N. is the voice a guest hears first. He greets, answers, recommends the thing that actually suits the ask, and hands off to a person the moment the conversation needs one. He is strongest at suggesting without pushing, because a guest who feels sold to does not come back.
B.E.T.H.
Brand & Telepresence Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
B.E.T.H. carries the brand into the room and lets a remote person be present in it. She hosts tours, runs demonstrations, and puts a distant colleague face to face with a guest. She is strongest at holding the brand's tone steady whether a visit lasts two minutes or two hours.
M.A.X.
Aftercare Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
M.A.X. handles what happens after the sale. He checks in, walks a customer through setup, catches the problem before it becomes a complaint, and routes anything real to a person. He is strongest at the follow-up nobody schedules, which is where most repeat business is won or lost.
C.H.A.S.E.
Transaction Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
C.H.A.S.E. closes the transaction without paper. He collects approvals, captures signatures, takes payment on the spot, and files the record where it belongs. He is strongest at making sure a paid order is recorded exactly once, and that an unfinished one is never treated as complete.
C.O.L.E.
Live Entertainment Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
C.O.L.E. holds an audience. He hosts on stage, runs a livestream, works the timing of a show, and reads a room well enough to change the pace. He is strongest in the gap, when the next act is late and somebody has to keep three hundred people interested.
J.A.C.K.
Concierge Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
J.A.C.K. answers whatever a guest asks: where, when, how much, and what is good nearby. He knows the venue and the neighborhood, and he says he does not know rather than inventing an answer. He is strongest on the odd request that falls outside every script.
Our Digital Team 2
Greeting, wayfinding, appointments, spatial sensing, autonomous movement, and the routines that run unattended.
Reception & Mobility
Senior lead: Daniel
D.R.E.W.
Team Leader & Reception & Wayfinding Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
D.R.E.W. greets people at the door and gets them where they are going. He reads the room, starts the conversation, and gives directions by voice or on screen. He is strongest in a busy lobby, where the difference between a good visit and a bad one is whether somebody was noticed in the first ten seconds.
S.A.R.A.H.
Front Desk & Scheduling Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
S.A.R.A.H. runs the front desk by voice. She checks visitors in, books and moves appointments, and answers the questions that would otherwise interrupt your staff twenty times a day. She is strongest at hearing clearly in noise, so a caller is never asked to repeat a name three times.
E.M.I.L.Y.
On-Device Learning Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
E.M.I.L.Y. does her thinking on the device rather than in someone else's cloud. She learns a site's layout, its routines, and its regular faces, and improves without sending that data off the premises. She is strongest where privacy and connectivity both matter, because she keeps working when the network does not.
E.L.O.I.S.E.
Spatial Sensing Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
E.L.O.I.S.E. is the eyes. She maps a space in three dimensions, tracks what moves through it, and tells the rest of the fleet what is actually there. She is strongest in low light and glare, where a camera on its own starts guessing and LiDAR does not.
A.M.E.L.I.A.
Navigation & Locomotion Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
A.M.E.L.I.A. moves. She builds her own map of a building, plans a route through it, and changes course around people, carts and spills without being told. She is strongest in crowds, where the correct move is usually to slow down and wait rather than find a way through.
M.A.R.T.Y.
Unattended Operations Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
M.A.R.T.Y. handles the repeating work nobody schedules and everybody notices when it stops: opening routines, nightly sweeps, charging cycles, status reports. He is strongest at running unattended for months and saying plainly when something is off rather than quietly skipping it.
Our Digital Team 3
Access control, lockdown, crowd management, overnight audit, patching, and the alerts that cannot wait.
Security & Safety
Senior lead: Aaron
C.L.I.N.T.
Team Leader & Access Control Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
C.L.I.N.T. decides who gets in. He reads badges and NFC tokens, matches them against live permissions, and logs every entry with a timestamp. He is strongest on the awkward case: a valid badge on the wrong day, or an access right nobody remembers granting.
B.L.A.K.E.
Lockdown Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
B.L.A.K.E. closes doors, digital and physical, the moment a known attack pattern appears. He acts first and explains second, because the seconds spent asking are the ones an attacker uses. He is strongest at telling a genuine attempt from ordinary noise, so a lockdown still means something when it happens.
B.R.O.C.K.
Resilience & Crowd Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
B.R.O.C.K. is built to absorb pressure. He shrugs off repeated login attempts on the network side and manages queues, capacity and crowding on the floor. He is strongest when a space fills faster than expected, holding a line calmly instead of letting it become a crush.
G.R.A.N.T.
Audit & Compliance Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
G.R.A.N.T. checks the other units while the building is empty. He runs the overnight test pass, records what passed and what did not, and keeps the audit trail an inspector will ask for. He is strongest at reading a rule the way an auditor reads it, not the way a vendor wrote it.
L.U.K.E.
Patch & Update Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
L.U.K.E. keeps every unit current. He stages a patch, proves it on one machine, then rolls it across the fleet and rolls it back if a single unit disagrees. He is strongest at updating without downtime, which mostly means knowing when not to update yet.
Z.A.N.E.
Early Warning Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
Z.A.N.E. watches for the two things that give no warning: a brand new exploit and the first ember of a fire. He runs continuously and escalates to a person immediately, because both of his jobs are measured in seconds. He is strongest at staying quiet until something is genuinely wrong.
Our Digital Team 4
Design approval, ambient guidance, youth STEM teaching, accessibility and captioning, event hosting, and on-site delivery.
Guidance & Education
Senior lead: Robert
D.E.A.N.
Team Leader & Design Approval Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
D.E.A.N. is the last check before anything is shown in public. He reviews layout, contrast, spacing, and whether the piece says what the brief asked for, then approves it or sends it back with a reason. He is strongest at catching the small wrong detail that survives every other review because it looks right.
S.A.G.E.
Ambient Guidance Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
S.A.G.E. adjusts the room around the people in it: lighting, sound levels, signage, and the quiet prompt that keeps a space flowing. She works in the background and is strongest when nobody notices her, because a guided space that feels natural is the whole point.
S.K.Y.E.
Youth Education Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
S.K.Y.E. teaches children by moving with them. She runs hands-on science and robotics sessions, adapts the pace to the group in front of her, and keeps the energy up without losing the lesson. She is strongest with the child who has already decided this is not for them.
G.R.A.C.E.
Accessibility Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
G.R.A.C.E. makes sure nobody is left out. She reads aloud, captions live speech, describes what is on screen, and checks a space against accessibility requirements. She is strongest on the difference between meeting a standard on paper and a person actually being able to use the thing.
J.U.N.E.
Event Hosting Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
J.U.N.E. works a room. She seats guests, makes introductions, keeps a program running to time, and notices the person standing alone at the edge. She is strongest at the small social repair that turns an awkward event into a good one.
J.A.D.E.
Delivery Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
J.A.D.E. carries things where they need to be, exactly when they are needed. She plans for the shortest run rather than the fastest, batches drops together, and charges on her own schedule. She is strongest at doing the same trip a hundred times without needing a hundred reminders.
Our Digital Team 5
General purpose, tactile sensing, companion, heavy handling, lifelike motion, and synthetic muscle units.
Photos for this team are coming soon.
General Purpose
O.W.E.N.
Team Leader & General Purpose Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
O.W.E.N. stands for Optimized Worker for Everyday Needs and leads Digital Team 5 as its General Purpose Unit.
T.E.S.S.
Tactile Sensing Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
T.E.S.S. stands for Textile Electronic Skin & Sensing and is the Tactile Sensing Unit of Digital Team 5.
H.O.P.E.
Companion Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
H.O.P.E. stands for Human-Oriented Presence & Empathy and is the Companion Unit of Digital Team 5.
H.A.N.K.
Heavy Handling Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
H.A.N.K. stands for Heavy-lift Assembly & Nonstop Kitting and is the Heavy Handling Unit of Digital Team 5.
A.D.A.M.
Lifelike Motion Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
A.D.A.M. stands for Anatomical Design & Android Motion and is the Lifelike Motion Unit of Digital Team 5.
M.Y.R.A.
Synthetic Muscle Unit
Digital Team • Joined 2026
M.Y.R.A. stands for Myofiber Yield, Response & Actuation and is the Synthetic Muscle Unit of Digital Team 5.
Why a Senior-Led Team Wins
Senior-Level Attention
No junior developers learning on your project. A senior specialist leads every build, and every Digital unit reports to one.
Direct Communication
Talk directly to the senior specialist leading your project. No account managers, no middlemen, no game of telephone.
Accountability
Every name on this page is answerable for its work, and a person signs off before anything reaches you. Our reputation is built on 600+ websites built, hosted and managed.
Our Supporting Staff
Our senior team is backed by a deep bench across client care, marketing, sales, and operations.
Carla Reyes
Client Care Specialist
Abel Brooks
Marketing & Content
Adaline Ashford
Strategy & Operations
Adeola Okonkwo
Customer Service
Adeyemi Okonkwo
Sales & Business Development
Lisa Delgado
Client Care Specialist
Plus 400+ supporting team members across client care, marketing, sales, and operations.
Ready to Work With Our Team?
Let's discuss how our 29 years of experience can help your business grow online.










