Meet The Team

Josh Billigmeier is the CEO and co-founder of Fireside and has been with the company since it was just a crazy idea with his co-founder Jeff Mascott. He co-founded Fireside on evenings and weekends by building a content management system for Press Secretaries. In those days, you had to be a webmaster with knowledge of FTP and Frontpage or Dreamweaver to publish websites, but the Fireside Web platform helped busy hill staffers quickly get press releases, photos, and files published to their website without any webmaster expertise. 

Before founding Fireside, Josh worked at several telecommunications and software testing startups. After transitioning to focus on Fireside full-time, Josh coded the first versions of Newsletter and CRM. He then took on the role of Head of Product Development and began building and leading a strong development team. After serving as the Head of Product Development, he transitioned into the CEO role in 2018.

Josh lives in Silver Spring with his wife Joanna and his four children: Mackenzie, Jackson, Paisley, and Finn. In his spare time, he enjoys retro gaming, electronics projects, a smattering of Python programming, and sports.

Fun fact: Josh is banned from Full Caff coffee by the Fireside Team.

Jen is Fireside's Executive Assistant and provides administrative support for the CEO.

If the ice needs to be broken, Caitlin is there to do so. She is not afraid to meet someone new and strike up a conversation. This stems from her passion for building relationships with people and learning more about their background. 

As the Marketing Coordinator, Caitlin develops and manages all marketing endeavors from social media posts, to updates for our clients. Before Fireside, she worked on Capitol Hill fostering constituent relationships and writing legislative materials. From there, she followed her love for food and the hospitality industry to Clyde’s Restaurant Group, where she found a deep love improving digital presence. 

In her free time, Caitlin enjoys traveling the world, cooking dishes from the places she visits, quoting "How I Met Your Mother", wishing she was a professor at Hogwarts, and watching her Fightin' Texas Aggies play!

Garvey is a Project Manager on Fireside's first-class Account Team where he works to onboard new clients to ensure they hit the ground running as they begin to use the software. He previously served as an Account Coordinator, where he bolstered his understanding of Fireside21 by answering myriad client questions in chats and tickets and over the phone. Prior to joining Fireside21, Garvey worked for The Chicago Council on Global Affairs as their Corporate Relations Coordinator.

Garvey is a graduate of the University of Kansas (#Jayhawks), where he majored in Political Science and Global & International Studies, and studied Farsi in Tajikistan.

In his spare time, Garvey loves to play tennis with friends, watch reruns of The Real Housewives, and babysit his roommates’ dog - but only on the weekends because he’s not ready for a long-term commitment.

As Fireside's Lead Web Developer and Creative Strategist, Stephanie ensures our websites stay ahead of the curve. She earned her bachelor’s degree in web design from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She enjoys integrating her coding knowledge with her passion for design. Prior to joining the Fireside21 team, Stephanie worked on the web team for Children’s National Health System, DC’s children’s hospital.

During this time, she strived to use her skill set to make a positive impact on others. She brings this same enthusiasm to our customers on Capitol Hill to improve government websites and connect citizens with their congressional representatives.

Outside of work, Stephanie loves spending time outdoors. Running, hiking, and traveling are her favorite pastimes. She currently resides in Virginia Beach with her husband, puppy, and baby girl.

James is Software Engineer working on new feature development and improvements to existing products. He nerds out over geospatial data, fun visualizations and satisfying user interfaces. In his spare time he enjoys playing corn hole, canoeing and working on side programming projects.

Nick is the Business Manager at Fireside, where he is responsible for company growth, managing the day-to-day sales and marketing operations, as well as new business opportunities. Nick joined Fireside in September 2016. Nick brings a wealth of knowledge regarding Capitol Hill to Fireside and uses his expertise to work with Congressional staff on ways to best communicate with constituents.

Nick previously served on Capitol Hill, most recently with the Member Services team at the House Republican Conference as well as in several other Congressional offices. Nick is a graduate of The Catholic University of America with a degree in politics, concentrating in American government. In his spare time, Nick enjoys playing golf, traveling, and cheering on the Buffalo Bills who, according to Nick (and Bills fans everywhere), are the best team in the AFC East.

Braeden has been at Fireside since December 2014, and ever since that first chat, he's put the client first. Nowadays, he spends the bulk of his time managing Fireside's Account Team to ensure our customer service is the best around. Before joining Fireside, Braeden spent 3 1/2 years on Capitol Hill as a Staff Assistant, Legislative Correspondent, and Legislative Assistant, polishing his customer service skills while also gaining significant experience with Fireside's CRM, newsletter, and website services. 

In his spare time, he is a sports junkie and borderline obsessed with his beloved St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis Blues, and Arizona Cardinals. In nicer weather, you can find him on the tennis courts or baseball diamonds of DC, doing his best (but not remotely close) impersonations of Roger Federer and Ozzie Smith, respectively. 

Originally from the rolling hills of apple and peach orchards in Pennsylvania's Adams County, Braeden lives with his prettier half, Kara, in Washington, DC. They're fans of food and traveling.

Daniel is a Project Manager at Fireside, who strives above all else to offer excellent customer support. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he majored in Classics and Government.

Nothing makes him happier than going the extra mile and learning that he has exceeded a client’s expectations and made their lives easier. In his free time, Daniel can be found grabbing a bowl of phở, playing board games, and watching animal documentaries (but not always at the same time!)

Rich has been in I.T. since 2006 and has served as Fireside's senior sysadmin since 2016, keeping the servers humming and the email flowing.  Here at FS, every day puts him in different shoes, ranging from firefighter to investigator, architect to deckhand.  Printers are one of his specialties... at least until they become sentient, overthrow the world's governments, and make toner cartridges the global currency.

Some of his free time is also spent "behind the curtain" as a sound designer in community theatre, including Silver Spring Stage, and with his wife Erica in The Coil Project.  Obsessions include their two cats, Eurogames, camping, retro video games, audio visual, mini golf, and craft beer.

Torsten is a Web Developer building new websites for clients and helping them have a stellar user experience. Prior to this role Torsten was on the Account Team doing support, project management, and web fixes. He was previously a legislative aide in the Maryland General Assembly managing both the legislative agenda and constituent responses for his small office. During this period he wished he was using Fireside21 to manage the office’s mail and casework programs. Prior to the Maryland legislature, Torsten interned in the senate and house where he first became obsessed with using Fireside21.

He’s passionate about open responsive government, user interaction and experience, and accessibility #a11y. Originally from Dallas, Texas, Torsten now lives in Washington, DC and is an avid cyclist and train enthusiast living near the largest train station he could find in the city. In his spare time he enjoys board games, the oxford comma, and linux.

Michael Lyons is a full stack software engineer at Fireside. He previously worked for WeSay.org, a non-profit group developing literacy applications for minority language groups.

After spending most of his childhood in Thailand, Michael moved to Maryland where he enjoys reading, family, cycling, board games, and the occasional FOSS contribution.

A mildly caffeinated and bilingual, young professional who was adopted by the Fireside team. When they discovered that with her experience in conflict resolution, including interpersonal and work contexts on the Hill and off, she would make her an exceptional addition to the Fireside family.

Behind the scenes, she’s just a proud cat dad with a sweet tooth that she pairs well with her love for yerba mate. You can catch her around town thriving since she cannot stay still while reminding her friends to drink water and be kind to the planet.

Barb wears many hats as she serves as Fireside’s Director of Operations, keeping Fireside moving forward and on track for our team and our clients.

Barb has a wealth of experience in both enterprise and start-up environments - some with other Fireside staff - from writing code to technical management. Prior to joining Fireside, Barb took her dream detour and served as the admissions director for Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where she brought repeatable, transparent processes & data capture to a creative admissions environment. She is delighted to be at Fireside, which allows her to bring her various professional experiences to her role here. 

Barb was an engineering major at Dartmouth College, where she was an original member & co-captain of the Dartmouth Women’s Rugby Club.  A long-time DC resident, Barb is thrilled to work in Fireside’s cool downtown location and get to bike to work each day past DC’s beautiful sights!

Ntando is a well-rounded IT professional in the role of Senior Desktop Support here at Fireside. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge coming from previous support roles within district government as well as the healthcare IT industry. The art of customer service and always looking for a better process or solution for the issue is what drives him forward.

In his spare time, Ntando likes to upgrade and maintain his vehicles to ensure prime flux capacitor performance as well as spending some time getting lost in nice places to focus on his photography.

As a Project Manager, Claudia Reed loves helping our clients every day by providing great customer service and software support. She is a recent graduate from the University at Buffalo where she studied Communication.

Through her time at Buffalo, she was able to take both computer programming and graphic design classes, which opened her eyes to a new interest in technology. During her summers of undergrad, she interned in DC for different lobbying firms and at the House Committee on Ways and Means. After her first summer, she knew that DC is where she wanted to live.

As Product Manager at Fireside21, Scott enjoys creating innovative, easy to use software that meet the needs of our clients.

With two decades of experience specializing in user focused, full-cycle web application development, his knowledge runs the gamut from user interface design to back end storage systems. Scott spends much of his time orchestrating the design, research, and development of our products. Prior to joining the Fireside21 team, Scott worked as a software developer at Epok, Inc.

Scott is originally from Saint Louis, Missouri and now lives in Northern Virginia, with his wife, Meg and son, Jasper. In his spare time he enjoys playing tennis, writing music, and toddler shenanigans.

Isabella is a Technical Product Manager at Fireside21 currently working on designing and building features like newsletter, the communications dashboard and project management. For her research project she has been working mainly with machine learning and looks forward to applying those skills to existing and future projects at Fireside21. She enjoys helping design features to the user's specific needs so she has been designing visualizations to help people understand and interact with the results of machine learning.

Prior to working at Fireside21 she was a student at UMD where she graduated with a degree in Computer Science specializing in data science. She spends her free time cooking and working out but mainly trying to decide the next place she will travel to. She has been to 6 out of 7 continents (only Antarctica left!) and has list of places to visit that isn’t getting shorter.

Mark is the Lead Engineer at Fireside21 working with the Fireside Web, Email, and CRM services. Prior to joining Fireside Mark worked at Epok where he was a senior developer/technical manager and software architect.

Brennan is a software engineer focused on assisting our account team to ensure that our clients get the most out of our products. He came to Fireside21 after a year as an intern for Battelle Memorial Institute. 

The internship and position at Fireside were a dream come true for Brennan, who majored in Computer Science, and got a minor in History, and is glad for the opportunities. 

Mike is a software engineer excited about the ways technology can improve our civic community.   He came to his current position with Fireside via a 2 year fellowship at the NIH for bioinformatics and then 3 years in the software support engineer role at Fireside.  As a convert to programming (having added a CS minor to his Physics & Math majors mid-way through college), Mike is happy both for the experience that path has given him and to now have the chance to build new features for our clients.

In his free time, Mike enjoys playing soccer and pretending he’s still as good as he was in college.  He also enjoys playing and running D&D, reading, the outdoors, and advocating for a response to the climate crisis.

There is more to Regina than meets the eye. Although she’s reserved, her observant nature helps her identify the nuances and details around her. It’s no wonder she thrives at crunching numbers and equations.

As an Accounting Associate, Regina works alongside the controller to assist with day-to-day accounting operations. Prior to joining Fireside, Regina managed the accounting department at Myriddian, a health and IT solutions firm.

Regina is pursuing her master’s degree in Accounting and Information Systems at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she also received a B.S. in Finance. She plans to earn her CPA license after finishing her master’s program.

Little-known fact: Regina’s love of travel has taken her to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, the Bahamas and the Philippines. Next on her list: a road trip to Canada.

Rachel Radmer is an Account Executive at Fireside. She is responsible for client outreach and growth. Maintaining close relationships and providing best practices to our clients is most important to her.

Oddly enough Rachel is actually one of those people that is from the DC area and decided to stick around!

When she is not working she likes to spend time with her little pup, Lucy, an adorable little Cavapoo, and her family and friends.  Something she will never turn down is a shopping trip. She also enjoys exploring new places, whether that be local or a plane ride away.  Food, fashion, and fitness are also things she is very passionate about.

Rachel brings several years of sales, technology and business leadership to Fireside, including two years on Capitol Hill working for another constituent relationship management focused vendor. Prior to that Rachel was the Regional Director of Sales at ClickNotices, a property management technology company. Rachel also served as an Account Executive at ConsultNet, a leading provider of IT recruiting services.

Artie joined the Fireside IT team in early 2020 with their Network Security degree fresh off the printer. They have a passion for problem-solving and trouble-shooting, and love a good puzzle, but prefer to work with people instead of in the server room. If there's a technical issue hitting pause on your workday, Artie will be ready to dive in and help get your devices up and running.  

If they aren't on the other end of your IT support emails, Artie is probably out for a walk with their dog Rusty, or cuddled up on the sofa with their cat and a book.

Devon's passion is helping others and working through challenging issues. With over 10 years of customer service industry experience, he brings ample communication, relationship-building, and technical skills to the Client Success Specialist role. On top of that, Devon loves new technologies. In addition to achieving a degree in Business Administration at Montgomery College, he minored in information technology, and he is currently working to obtain an IT certification through DeVry University for Technical Management and A+ as well. This passion for tech also extends to his personal life. If there is any new cell phone or technology on the market, he is going to want to learn more about it and eventually get it!

In his spare time, Devon is a semiprofessional bowler and competes regularly in large competitions on weekends. When he is not traveling for bowling, he likes to catch up on all the latest movie releases and enjoys time with his dog. If that wasn’t enough, he is an audiophile, and you will always catch him listening to or singing a good tune.

Devon is highly excited to help the Fireside Account Team provide excellent support to clients. So come on into chat and strike up a conversation! 

Lizbeth is a Client Success Specialist at Fireside and enjoys helping staffers on Capitol Hill be the best they can be in their efforts to serve their constituents. Prior to joining Fireside, Lizbeth spent most of her time on the campaign trail working with candidates, elected officials, and everyday voters as a field operative. Having worked on local, state, and federal races, and most recently as the field director for a New Jersey U.S. Congressman, her insight into the typical experiences of constituents, as well as key congressional staff members, has come in handy when helping clients navigate Fireside’s suite of products.   

Originally from New Jersey, Lizbeth will encourage you to use the word sub over hoagie and can point you in the right direction for a great bagel or slice of pizza. In her spare time, Lizbeth enjoys CrossFit, being out in nature, doing a good guided meditation, listening to a podcast or two, and exploring DC.

Ashley is a Client Success Specialist who is passionate about interacting with and helping others, with the goal of making their day-to-day needs more effortless. She has over 7 years of experience in customer service and takes pride in going above and beyond for every client and building those long-lasting relationships.

In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family, cooking new dishes, horseback riding, and traveling. She also loves a challenge and faces them head on with eagerness to overcome them.

As Fireside’s Content Coordinator, Thea helps current and future customers understand how Capitol Hill can be simplified. Using technology to create a more efficient government excites her, and she is thrilled to pursue this goal at Fireside.  

In her free time, she enjoys riding bike trails, perfecting the macaron, and reading printed copies of the newspaper. She is a recent graduate of the University of Florida, where she studied History, Computer Science, and German. From one swamp to the next!

Jeremy is an experienced and certified IT professional since 2012. He has worked as a Coordinator and Lead Technician for numerous Federal IT, Financial IT, and Healthcare IT projects around the United States. His speciality is building and repairing computers.

In his spare time, Jeremy likes to increase his knowledge of DevOps, play video games, and make funky beats.