OUR TEAM

Justin Porter
Founder & Chief Solutions Architect

Justin is the Founder of Text Connects and is certified as a Shopify Development Expert. His interest in computers began in high school when he founded the company to serve a hungry market of small businesses with less than ten employees and a list of computer issues.

Today, 22 years later, Justin has been involved in the building, deployment or replatforming of more than 100 e-commerce sites for startups and recognized brands, as well as custom application development and systems integration for more than 60 organizations, from “mom and pop” to enterprise-level. 

He graduated from Daniel Webster College with a degree in Aviation Flight Operations. His studies led him to appreciate the importance of safety and risk mitigation that carryover in his work today. It also earned him what amounts to a second major in computer science, courtesy of his computer-science-major roommates.

As a Pilot-in-Command, Second-in-Command, and flight instructor, Justin has nearly 10,000 hours in the cockpits of single-engine, multi-engine, and turbojet aircraft. 

 

Operations Team

Madison (Maddie) Trott
Project Manager

Maddie “raced” into Text Connects in August 2020 to support our team in managing the dozens of individual projects we are working on at any one time. 

As a committed chef and baker, Maddie knows how to follow the proper steps in managing any project, as well as when to confidently modify a “recipe.” 

Certified as an Administrative Assistant, she knows how to manage her time and priorities well. She is also skilled, as many well-trained Admins are, in “managing up.” A prized skill on our very busy team.

She truly did earn her spot at the company by racing. When not in the office or snuggling her eccentric Shih Tzu and Siamese you’ll find Maddie at the track fabricating and welding Street Stock racing car frames with her NASCAR-driver boyfriend. 

On any project with Maddie our motto is “do not mess with a woman holding a hot welding torch!”

 

 

Kristen Bennett
Administrative & Human Resources Assistant

Kristen joined Text Connects in 2017 after a career managing medical offices. She is “client-facing” with a smile and helps our clients with data entry and production for their e-commerce stores.

An organizational wizard, it’s Kristen that polishes our reputation for keeping projects (and our people!) buttoned-down. An accomplished master-multitasker, she also runs point on billing and invoicing.

Kristen will tell you she loves her “small town country life” in Eastern Connecticut where she was born and raised, graduating from Woodstock Academy. Married and a mother of two “boys” (grown men, really), Kristen is devoted to one particular aspect of life in her small town, NASCAR short track racing.

Weekend nights will find her at local races with her eyes on a certain Chevy Monte Carlo. Behind the wheel is her championship-winning son Zack with her other son, Cameron, a crew member specializing in a race car’s soul, tires. Both are part of the family’s ZR Motorsports team.

Maybe it’s watching the “bump ‘n banging” of short track racing (imagine three-dozen-plus cars trying to pass each other on a half-mile oval!) that enables her to keep her eyes on so many spinning plates at Text Connects. Whatever it is, she loves the work and the team, as well as traveling to client offices, all while managing those spinning plates.

 

 

Sales Team

Joe Kunkel
Sales Specialist

Joe joined Text Connects in July 2024 as a Sales Specialist. We see the sales role at Text Connects as crucial to our success and agree with Henry Ford’s maxim: “Nothing happens until someone sells something.” Amen.

With several years of technical sales and service experience under his belt, Joe is primed to help our clients. Besides helping them to find solutions and understand their options, he is also another set of eyes and ears on what our clients want and need to be successful going forward. This allows him to provide crucial feedback as we develop additional solutions for e-commerce.

If you talk to him for even a short time it makes total sense why he says, “I love sales because I get to meet and connect with people from various backgrounds.”

Joe has lots of experience solving problems and finding solutions. First, he’s the dad of a toddler daughter which involves a LOT of “solutions” (“eat this,” “go to bed please,” etc.). He’s also very involved in cooking, film, TV, and music festival production. He’s even produced a short film that he self-fundraised to the tune of $25k.

As an E-4 (think Specialist or Corporal) in the Army for five solid years, Joe has ventured far beyond “Woostah” and the tri-state area where he grew up. His Army MOS (occupation) was as an MP (Military Police). It’s nice to know that when Joe has your back, he really does.

Thank you for your service, Joe! And, remember what Henry Ford said.

 

 

Savanna Tuttle
Web Development Sales Specialist

Meet Savanna, with two distinctions at Text Connects. She was recruited by her brother, Ethan, one of our Front-End Engineers. And she will be the first nurse in our ranks when she earns her degree in November 2023.

By day, Savanna works hard documenting and optimizing our sales processes. At night she dons her white nursing cap and attends nursing school five nights a week! Okay, she’s in California; we have never seen her in a nursing cap.

She joined us in July of 2023 and brings a perfect mix of experiences. She’s been an Inventory Specialist, a Retail Sales Associate, and, literally, a Problem Solver for Amazon.

She’s also kept herself busy in the medical field, performing hearing screenings for newborns, coordinating patient care for an orthopedic practice, and earning certifications as an Emergency Medical Technician and BLS/CPR (Basic Life Support/Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation)

Savanna reports what she likes most about her new job is that she feels trusted to do a good job and she feels the team’s confidence in her. As she says, “It is nice to feel supported with what I am doing.”

In her free time? What free time? Remember, five days a week in nursing school AND hours a day for Text Connects.

Fact is, she is an accomplished dancer and dance teacher. IF her time ever allows, you might find her taking a dance class. With her ambition and schedule, being light on your feet is a necessity.

 

Development Team

Ethan Tuttle
Front-End Engineer

Ethan joined Text Connects in March of 2022. On arrival, we were going to nickname him “Tuttle from Tulsa,” his birthplace, but withdrew that when we learned his nickname for many years has been “Turtle.” Done. We can’t beat that.

Tasked with the design, creation, and modification of Shopify stores, Ethan is a kind of puzzle master and loves the daily challenges of the pieces and parts he gets to work with as a front-end developer.

He learned to code in C++ in high school, took college courses in computer science and has since adopted C# as his favorite language. He says it’s less “strict.” than C++. [Editor’s note: What evs!]

Ethan migrated to Sacramento, the Gold Rush capital of the world, at an early age and works remotely for Text Connects from there.

There indeed might be a “turtlish” quality to Ethan. He freely shares that he is a hiker, a devoted gamer, and has been working on his own games steadily for more than five years (he says the games he has created map his own growth as a developer)..

Still, you might have to coax him out of his “shell” to find out that he once ran a small team at Google developing a tool for sales agents involved with Google Nest.

The pair of Google Glass he keeps in his home office? He earned those.

 

 

Tristan Frazier
Full Stack Developer

Tristan joined us as a Web Development Intern in March 2022. By June she was promoted to Entry Level Web Developer. What does that mean? Daily she gets to digitally “dirty” her hands with Shopify Theme updates and Shopify App development.

Shopify Themes are the head and heart of your Shopify website. As an Intern she tended to shadow more experienced developers on our team, now they shadow her to help her grow as a developer.

Self-taught in HTML and CSS, she became so keen to learn more she completed MIT’s Professional Certificate in Coding, a full-stack development course.

Married to her high school sweetheart, a “Coastie” or Coast Guardsman, he (really, “they”) are now on their eighth and final duty station.

With all that moving, you might be surprised at how she loves to spend her free time. Camping. With a 23-foot travel trailer named RV-D2 (editor’s note: nerd!), two 6'1" teenage boys (when they agree to go), and a Toy Poodle called Bean.

Bean is described by Tristan as “high maintenance” and “chill.” Hmm.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” We’re thinking Tristan must have first-rate intelligence. “High maintenance” and “chill”???

She is a proud member of the “50 under 40” club. That is, she has visited all 50 states before she turned 40. [Note to HR: can we say she is still under 40?]

 

 

Elva Rothman
Entry Level Web Developer

Elva or as some friends call her “Elvi,” started with Text Connects as a paid intern after she completed another web development internship and earned a Full Stack Web Development Certification from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania.

As an Entry Level Web Developer, her main role is to write code to customize/debug websites for our clients and to QA other people’s code.

While she really enjoys coding, she enjoys even more seeing her work come to life once deployed on a client’s website. Heck, a friend loaned her “Learn Python the Hard Way” (by Zed Shaw) and she devoured it.

From Rye, New York, just a hop, skip, and a commuter train away from Manhattan, Elva latched on to four P’s growing up – pilates, playlists (she’s made more than 200!), pasta sauce (she is quite the chef), and pups (currently Hazel, a nine-year old hound mix and Rain).

Even with her commitments at Tulane University, Elva sought additional challenges. Thus, driven by her love for cleaning, she founded 1-800-Elva, a vibrant marketplace connecting college students with cleaning services or opportunities to work as cleaners themselves.

Not satisfied with all these activities, Elva also runs a business called “Brain Buckets by Elva.” These hand-crocheted delights range from fashionable varied yarn colors and patterns to novelty bucket hats that can make you look like a fun frog or strawberry. You have to see this to believe it.

The word, elleve, means 11 in Danish and is pronounced like Elva, who is Danish herself and named after her great-grandmother, the 11th child in her family—makes sense since we think Elva is an 11/10.