About Us - Complexly
- ️Mon Aug 01 2022
Hank Green
Founder
Hank Green started making YouTube videos in 2007 with his brother, John. They thought it was a pretty dumb idea, but it turned out pretty well. In addition to his work with SciShow, Hank is the co-founder of VidCon, DFTBA Records, and Crash Course.
John Green
Founder
John Green is a host and co-creator of Crash Course. He is also the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines. John talks about world history, US history, and literature on Crash Course. His favorite band is The Mountain Goats and his second favorite band is also The Mountain Goats.
Julie Walsh Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Julie loves to solve problems and bring out the best in people and projects. Her vague life goal of “helping people” led to a psychology degree, nonprofit administration work, and now helping fulfill Complexly’s mission. In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking, volunteering and other forms of Type II fun.
Jenn Marrow
Director of Finance
Jenn Marrow loves spreadsheets & puzzles of all kinds; she found her dream job here at Complexly. Outside of the office she cheers on the Seattle Mariners in good times and bad, walks in the woods with her dogs, travels with her family, and relishes rainy days.
Kelsey Savage
Chief Business Officer
Kelsey loves hosting game nights, drinking natural wine, and trying to keep her succulents alive in her very small Washington, DC apartment. In other words, she’s peak millennial. She handles sponsorships and underwriting for Complexly and previously worked at PBS.
Gabriel Blanco
Chief Creative Officer
Gabriel is a firm believer that if something can be imagined, then it can be made. He is an avid storyteller, having produced feature films, television, advertising, short form and digital media. He oversees all creative and production at Complexly and thinks that education is the best method to preserve this little blue rock we all live on.
Haley Catton
Director of People Operations
Haley finds joy in helping humans be their best selves — almost as much as she loves cheese. When not exploring the great outdoors, traveling, volunteering at church, or hosting craft nights, her hidden introvert side is at home puzzling, curled up with a good book and her cats (Merry & Pippin), or attempting to beat her husband at video games.
Nick Jenkins
Executive Producer
Nick is a musician, filmmaker, and car guy. Also, he is the Executive Producer for Study Hall.
Heather DiDiego
Executive Producer
Heather is a lifelong learner, and strives to answer at least 3 new “wait, what?” or “wait, how?” questions every day. She loves herbal tea and propagating house plants, and only once mixed those two interests with an unfortunate outcome.
Seth Radley
Executive Producer
Seth has worked for Complexly since 2016 and before that he was a Senior Digital Media Producer at Ohio State University. He lives in Toronto with his family.
Nicole Sweeney
Executive Producer
Nicole says things on the internet. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
Sam Schultz
Director of Art & Design
Cartoonist/animator Sam Schultz spent his youth playing Nintendo and reading Krazy Kat comics instead of learning math, but that’s worked out pretty well for him so far. In his free time he can be found stressing out about his mobile art gallery and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Karim Hajj
Senior Producer
Karim is a passionate visual media maker with experience in documentaries, journalism, digital video and cinematography. He oversees production on the Crash Course team and believes strongly that helping people connect to stories is the best way to educate.
Karina Schink
Content Manager
Karina is a writer, baker, and generally good bean. In her free time you can find her caring for her grandfather’s farm, traipsing through fantasy worlds, or running away from monsters—all virtually, of course. You’ll never find her at parties, but if you need to, she’ll be with the dog.
Matthew Gaydos
Marketing Manager
Matthew started his Complexly journey back in 2013 by spending a couple of years working at the DFTBA warehouse. Since then, he’s gone on to produce several YouTube channels, including Journey To The Microcosmos, and is now Complexly’s Marketing Manager. In his free time, Matt is usually podcasting about Muppets, watching Formula 1, or playing video games.
Laser Webber
Development Manager
Laser Webber’s background is in journalism, music, and theater, with a common goal of creating empathy through storytelling and reliable information. He has been helping creators connect with their audiences through crowdfunding for ten years. One time he wrote a song about Mars Curiosity that was played in the rover’s control room at JPL. Pretty cool!
Fiona Eggen
Development Coordinator
Fiona is a northern Indiana native now living in the DC area. She loves playing Pokémon, eating sushi, and watching Pride and Prejudice (the 2005 version, of course). When not working she can be found spending time with her miniature poodle, Wanda.
Aimee Roberts
Art Director
Aimee is an animator, illustrator, and lover of all things cheese. When she was a small child, she accidentally locked herself in the trunk of a car for a few minutes, and she thinks that explains a lot about her. Originally from New England, she is acclimating to the mountains by taking an unnecessary amount of pictures.
Callie Dishman
Sound Designer
Callie is here to make stuff sound good and do other stuff good too. She was introduced to Hank and John’s videos in high school and then blinked and somehow found herself working for them ten years later. Somewhere in the midst of that blink she earned a degree in Audio Production and gained experience in many facets of audio, including field recording, mixing and editing for music and dialogue, and sound design for video and podcast productions. Overall, she is very proud to be a small cog in a machine that works to make education free, accessible, and most importantly, not boring.
Josef “Tuna” Metesh
Sound Designer
Tuna is the kind of guy who reads all the manuals for the things he buys. Nerdy, maybe, but he never has to ask about camera settings. In his spare time he plays and records music and does sound design for film, but his time is rarely spare because he has a tendency to take on more projects than he should. Someday he’ll hit a balance and be able to take a break, probably, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Nate Biehl
Motion Graphics Designer
Nate Biehl has one of those names that feels incomplete unless you say the whole thing. Multi-instrumentalist, designer, and videomaker since the days of tape, he lives to get carried away by exciting new sights, sounds, and stories. Born in rural Montana, he’s thrilled that a kid who regularly used outhouses could grow up to make videos seen around the world in minutes.
Matthew Kreizenbeck
Motion Designer
Matt spent May of 2021 living in a COVID bubble with the cast and crew of the Teletubbies. Now he lives in Portland, OR where he designs motion graphics and catalogues wildflowers.
Jaclyn Micek
Motion Designer
By day Jaclyn is an animating, drawing, video gaming, dice hoarding, cat loving, occasionally glassblowing but always oxygen breathing gal from the midwest. By night she is all the same things but probably asleep. Her educator family members are thrilled that she’s working to help people learn, and she must admit she’s excited about it too!
Dakota Sheperd
Animation Designer
Animation is a life-long love for Dakota. In addition to her animation illustration and motion graphics work she enjoys sewing costumes, visiting national parks, and trying to cook new recipes. More than anything she loves to create and to learn. It makes her so happy that the things she creates here can help other people learn new things too!
Brett Underhill
Animation Designer
Brett Underhill is an Animator and Illustrator based in south Florida. He has designed and animated everything from educational content to music videos, as well as taught college animation and storyboarding courses.
Trevor Jones
Animation Designer
Trevor Knapp Jones (pronounced like “nap”) grew up in Albuquerque, graduating from California Institute of the Arts in 2012 with his BFA in Character Animation. In addition to his role as an Animation Designer with Complexly he also teaches animation classes at the University of New Mexico and non profits like Calibraska.
Claire van Ryzin
Animation Designer
Claire is an amateur artist and professional weird aunt. When not making drawings that are trapped behind a computer screen, she is listening to Post-Punk and sharing her much-too-strong opinions on Dr Seuss movie adaptations.
Lara Heermance
Motion Designer
Lara is a Brooklyn-based motion designer on Crash Course. She infuses her work with playful humor and creative storytelling, and loves to experiment a variety of styles. She loves using her animation and illustration prowess to create fun lyric videos, and thought provoking educational videos. When she’s not buried in Adobe After Effects, Lara loves to take contemplative long walks, watercolor at the park, and daydream about her future dog.
Hiroka Matsushima
Videomaker
Hiroka is a video editor, a filmmaker/lover, a traveller, and a soon to be aunt of three nephews. Her name means “shiny flower.” She knows it doesn’t make sense at all, but she likes it a lot.
Brandon Brungard
Producer
Brandon makes Crash Course and The Art Assignment as well as produces and directs a series on natural history, The Brain Scoop, at the Field Museum. Brandon studied engineering in college and likes to spend his time stressing out about the demise of video games due to touch screens. His other hobbies include hiking, not sleeping, and naming his pets after various types of pasta
Sheridan Gibson
Producer
Sheridan produces, directs, and edits Origin of Everything. Previously, she edited Mental Floss and directed 100 Days. In her spare time Sheridan loves to bake, bullet journal, and overanalyze the themes and philosophies of animated children’s tv shows.
Sarah Suta
Producer
Sarah is a filmmaker/animator and occasional DJ who probably just watched a super-strange movie and would like to tell you all about it. She has entirely too many college degrees (or maybe just enough?) and a love for all things creepy-crawly.
Hannah West
Producer
Hannah West is an editor and videographer with a passion for documentary film. She would love to exchange phone numbers, as long as you understand that she’ll be sending you memes on a regular basis. She likes to spend her free time with family, friends, and the internet.
Caroline Palumbo
Producer
Caroline, grew up in Oklahoma and still resides there despite her constant complaining of the heat. She got her start in video production working at ad agencies as a production assistant bringing copious cups of coffee to producers and directors. Now she is a producer for Complexly! In her free time she enjoys writing, roller skating, and watching a questionable amount of television. If you like the same television shows as her, get ready for very lengthy in-depth conversations about it.
Savannah Geary
Producer
Savannah loves the environment and media so much they went and got a masters degree about it. Here is a non-comprehensive list of things they will not shut up about: plastic pollution, short-format video, the ecology of central Florida, esoteric video game lore.
Yolanda Rodriguez
Producer
Yolanda is an LA-based producer working on Crash Course, with a background in scripted and unscripted creative development. In her spare time, she enjoys writing, being in her romance book club, and co-hosts a Jane Austen adaptations podcast.
Julie Levitsky
Producer
Julie is a producer on Crash Course. Her previous work includes documentaries, food media, and late-night TV. She likes horror movies and spends an unreasonable amount of time making and thinking about ice cream.
Jess Stempert
Producer
Jess produces SciShow Kids and SciShow Tangents. She’s never met a fiber craft she didn’t like, and she can usually be found rotating between her many works-in-progress while watching video game speedruns. She has a Princess Bride quote for all situations both conceivable and otherwise.
Madeline Doering
Editorial Director
Madeline likes talking about why people should like math, so much so a small child once said she should change her name to “Mathie.” She works on Study Hall, hoping to squeeze math in everywhere. Yes, especially in literature. When not pursuing those quests, she’s reading, baking, looking for whales, or sampling new cheeses
Darcy Shapiro
Editorial Director
Darcy is a recovering anthropologist who once told her PhD adviser that she planned to drop out of grad school to become a certified cheese professional. (She didn’t.) She probably wants to talk to you about fossil apes, your skeleton, and college football.
Meghan Modafferi
Editorial Director
Meghan is a North Carolina-based story enthusiast with a background in educational media and public radio production. On any given day, you might find her reading, hiking, cooking, or going to a play. She occasionally writes and performs comedy, but she is always down for karaoke.
Daniel Comiskey
Editorial Director
As the father of three young kids, Daniel watches a lot of YouTube. That’s what led him to Complexly after many years of magazine editing. His favorite episode of SciShow is the one about butt hair, and he politely asks you not to judge him for it.
Erin Hale
Administrative Manager
Erin loves to collaborate. Especially if the event, project, or experience supports community building and authentic connection. Outside of work, Erin enjoys sharing meals with wonderful folks, Pit bulls in flower crowns, and lounging in the sun like a lizard.
Brittany Rall
Staff Accountant
Brittany uses her analytical skills in service of mission-driven companies including Seattle Opera, Yale Repertory Theatre, and now Complexly. She also reads voraciously, crochets pretty well, and enters puzzle-solving competitions with friends. If you visit her, she hopes you like cats, because she can’t resist fostering adorable shelter kittens.
Sarah Hamill
Executive Assistant
Sarah supports Julie, Gabriel, and the Complexly executive team. In her spare time she enjoys tending to her garden, puttering around the Missoula Farmers Market, and going on walks with her dog, Cowboy. She was born and raised in New Mexico, and gets excited about Hatch green chili and hot air balloons.
Raven McMurry
People Operations Coordinator
Outside of Complexly, Raven bakes a lot. She’ll talk to you about her baking misadventures and why lemons are the best citrus any time of day. When Raven’s not covered in flour, she stays active in her community by volunteering and hosting local events.
Hayley Holmes
Accounting Clerk
Hayley lives in Missoula with her husband and black lab, Missy. Her hobbies center around health/wellness and she loves going on runs or trying out new workouts with friends. She also is a movie lover and finds herself at the local Roxy Theater almost every week.
Alex Johnson
Administrative Assistant
Alex was born and raised in Indianapolis, and is a lover of all things music. When he’s not teaching lessons or working at Complexly, he enjoys reading short story collections and going through his TV watchlist before just deciding to watch Atlanta or season 4 of Breaking Bad again.
Paola Garcia-Prieto
Audience Development Strategist
Paola is a southern California native who keeps willingly moving to cold places. She had no idea her addiction to procrastinating on social media would lead to her doing social media for a living, but TBH she should have seen that coming. When she’s not glued to a screen Paola enjoys cooking, camping, and watching/performing/stage managing theatre.
Julia “Buzz” Bezio
Communications Coordinator
Buzz is a positive, energetic, enthusiastic learner. The thrills of public speaking, writing and media take up most of their time. Outside of work, Buzz is a dog mom, kayaker, knitter, and they can ride a bike.
Brooke Shotwell
Communications Coordinator
Brooke believes that storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to build connections between people. When she’s not coordinating Complexly’s communications, she can be found teaching vinyasa and taking yoga classes, reading fantasy novels, eating pizza, drinking wine, coloring, and exploring the greater Portland area with her husband and their moyen poodle, Boomer.
Sabrina Mata
Associate Producer
Sabrina LOVES filmmaking, tacos and dogs, order not relevant. When she’s not working on creating content, she’s dreaming, living, and breathing new ideas or binge-watching content for “educational purposes”. Outside her passions in film, she enjoys crafting, gaming, and having a great time with friends and family!
Hannah Bodenhausen
Associate Producer
Hannah is a filmmaker and editor who speaks almost entirely in lines from comedy specials. Besides film and online video, she loves podcasts, black coffee, and indie rock concerts. Her first venture into making content for the internet involved her wearing a banana costume, so working on Crash Course is definitely a step up.
Faith “Eve” Schmidt
Associate Producer
Faith made her first video when she was 8, about her cat on an adventurous journey to the litter box. Now, Faith is an adult who actually gets to be paid to make videos. She enjoys playing games, woodworking and cuddling with her friends’ pets. Her adventurous spirit has brought her to mountains and beaches far and wide, but she is most at home with her guitalele, her plants, and a warm beverage (or a cold sparkly one, depending on the season).
Mackenna Goodrich
Associate Producer
Mackenna was briefly a neuroscience major in college. Now, she’s a director and choreographer based in New York. In her spare time, she teaches kids’ dance classes, navigates the New York food scene, and runs her elaborate ecosystem of families on The Sims 4.
Katie Brink
Associate Producer
Katie loves marching band, graphic design, and color-coded spreadsheets. When she’s not working on Crash Course, you can usually find her hanging out with her dog Beans, sippin’ on a Baja Blast, or starting new DIY projects that she’ll maybe get around to finishing someday.
Jada Price
Production Coordinator
Jada grew up in the shadow of Colorado’s Front Range and is asked why she moved to flat Indiana at least once a week. She’s an English student who is passionate about making knowledge accessible. When not on the clock, you can usually find her at a local coffee shop or working on one of her digital art projects.
Sam Brown
Production Coordinator
Sam Brown was raised by a chemist and a librarian, so of course he’d be working at SciShow. on his way there, he’d been a cook, a radio DJ, a film festival factotum, a junk salesman, a tea snob, and the director of the Montana Book Festival. When he’s not nose-deep in a spreadsheet, you can find him writing short stories or reading long books.
Alex Billow
Script Editor
Alex is a reformed molecular biologist who turned to science writing and editing full time. They spend their spare time playing games (video and tabletop) and gushing about their cat.
Gary Reddin
Script Editor
Gary grew up among the cicada songs and tornado sirens of Oklahoma. When he’s not working on Crash Course, he can be found writing absurdist humor or niche millennial poetry — sometimes both. He has an MFA in creative writing, but that doesn’t stop him from misspelling ‘license’ every single time.
JD Voyek
Script Editor
JD is a former astrophysicist and teacher who spent her PhD years exploring Hollywood representations of science. As the consultant for a short-lived SciFi television show, she occasionally made sure its science was at least plausible. She enjoys writing screenplays, playing co-op board games, and finding cool-looking rocks.
Ev Crunden
Script Editor
Ev is a writer, photographer, and editor with years of experience in environmental journalism. Originally from Texas, they have spent the last 15+ years hopping around the Northeast, where they enjoy the colder weather but miss TexMex desperately. They love the ocean, cameras of all varieties, and talking about toxic chemicals and landfills at length. If you have a baby or an animal, please show them now.
Paige Madison
Script Editor
Paige is an editor who loves telling science stories, particularly about human origins. She is excessively caffeinated and perpetually asking how we know what we know about the past. As a kid, she once cried because she was afraid all the fossils had already been discovered. Outside of work, she is happiest running long distances through the mountains.
Annie Fillenwarth
Associate Editor
Annie is a writer/editor/reader from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She has an MFA in writing for children and young adults and has co-hosted the podcast And You’re Watching… about kids’ TV and movies from the 2000s. She may have been a whale in a past life.
Amy Peterson
Script Editor
Amy is a former paleoanthropologist who decided that talking to people about cool research was way more fun than actually doing it. She’s a big fan of starting knitting projects and not a fan of finishing them. You’ll often find her in the woods around Washington, DC, trying out the newest cocktail bar in town, or on the couch with her wife and dog. Museums are her happy place.
Eliza Costa
Script Editor
Eliza is a lifelong reader and writer who’s thrilled that she gets to be curious for a living. Originally from Missouri, she’s currently enjoying mountain life in Missoula. She frequently finds herself rescuing animals, when she’s not too busy gazing fondly at her three cats.
Maya Lannen
Associate Script Editor
Maya is a reader, writer, outdoorsperson, and proud owner of two very beautiful cats. She was born and raised in Michigan, and has lived in various places around the Great Lakes. A kindergarten teacher in her former life, her skills include cutting with scissors, and counting to 100 by 1s, 5s, and 10s.
Anna Kasik
Script Editor
Anna lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband and daughter, a cat, and three fish tanks. She reads a lot, and she has written and edited enough children’s books to fill a bookshelf. She plays piano, pipe organ, and ukulele, and she’s a fan of Olympic sports, cross-country road trips, and peanut butter.
Emma Dauster
Senior Staff Writer
Emma does SciShow stuff like coming up with video ideas, making sure there’s legit science to support them, and turning them into a story you’d actually enjoy. After a decade in the lab, being peed on by mice and rats, she’s found writing has its charms.
Jaime Chambers
Senior Staff Writer
Jaime’s curiosity has taken her many places: from vaccinating chickens to wrangling mammoth bones. When she’s not writing for Crash Course, she likes searching for animal tracks and eating pineapple-jalapeno pizza. As a kid, she fantasized about having a glass-domed rainforest in her backyard. (She still thinks that would be cool.)
Paige Esterly
Script Editor
Paige Esterly is a playwright, producer, and director based in NYC. Originally from California, her special interests include bugs (because her dad loves them), puns (because her mom AND dad love them), and old films (because who doesn’t love them??). Paige has a background in art history, so even though she can’t name a single member of The Backstreet Boys, she can tell you all about the transatlantic exchange of ideas, culture, and aesthetics in the first half of the 20th century.
Farhan Mitha
Senior Staff Writer
Farhan loved natural history as a kid and now he gets paid to write about it for PBS Eons. He is still trying to figure out how exactly that happened. When he’s not writing scripts for Eons, he’s usually hiking through a forest somewhere looking for weird bugs.
Stefan Chin
Video Editor
Stefan Chin has been making videos with SciShow since 2013. He loves motion graphics, spreadsheets, and gaming. He’s also on a quest to find the best pad thai on the West Coast.
Bill Mead
Video Editor
Bill is doing fine, thanks for asking. In his free time he likes to hang out with his wife, son, and two dogs, Yogurt and Aldo Leopold. When he has the time he enjoys tasting various ice cream flavors and acting very snobby about it.
Madison Lynn
Editor / Videographer
Madison was born and raised on the outskirts of Missoula and never imagined he would get to make a living with cameras when he started goofing around with MiniDV tapes as a kid. In his free time he attempts to write music, though he rarely finishes songs these days, so he often resorts to making his wife play the greatest board game in existence with him, Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Brigid Kennison
Video Editor
Brigid is a music and dog lover, hailing from Chicago by way of New York. She’s the editor for Crash Course and besides that has been making or working on documentaries since high school. Her formative texts are Planet of the Apes and The Simpsons.
Chayton Whaley
Video Editor
Chayton as a child, according to his mother, always had a camera in his hands filming something, and while he has shifted his focus from being behind the camera to behind a computer screen editing, that passion for making and creating has never stopped. In his spare time in-between editing episodes of Bizarre Beasts and Journey to the Microcosmos you can typically find him having movie nights with friends, or working on the abundance of Gunpla model kits he keeps telling himself he needs one more of.
Ellison Winterstein
Video Editor
Ellison Winterstein is a video editor and filmmaker who also just happens to like to learn. When he’s not making something Ellison can usually be found watching a movie, playing a horror video game, or contemplating life and his place in the universe. He has yet to figure out that last part, but he’s working on it, he swears.
Seth Gliksman
Video Editor
Seth likes to make stuff. Art stuff and theatre stuff, music stuff and video stuff, and honestly? If there’s stuff? Seth wants in. And he wants you in, too! Either as a willing participant or a captive audience. (A laugh is a laugh.) And if you have a passion for trivia and NYC traffic, you’ll have to catch his guest spot in the back seat of the Cash Cab. Today, if you want Seth to leave you alone, just remind him he has work to be doing. He’ll instantly realize you’re right and vanish into thin air.
Linus Obenhaus
Video Editor
Linus is a video editor and motion graphics artist from the great state of Maine! (Although he has learned to love Indiana). He loves learning, especially anything that involves a good map or quirk of language. When he’s not working, you’ll often find him playing disc golf or adding movies to his never-ending watchlist.
Chris Angkico
Video Editor
Chris is a Seattle-based editor working on PBS Eons. His first interaction with Hank and John’s videos was in his high school AP World History class, where Crash Course World History was required in-class viewing material at least once a week. A chore, I know. Whenever he’s not working on videos, he’s probably reading, playing Madden, watching the latest well-reviewed show or movie, or just rewatching Succession.