Cool Jobs

Imagine being encouraged to create crises at work, being responsible for testing cookie recipes for your favorite restaurant or being paid to watch Ohio State games from a ‘skybox’ far above the stadium. Believe it or not, those tasks are all in a day’s work for some people who live and work near you.

These surprising seven have landed some pretty unorthodox jobs or ventured out to create their own. Motivated by everything from following a dream to pursuing a lifestyle to making something worthwhile, they’re never at a loss for words when answering the age-old question: “So, what do YOU do for a living?”   

Best Gig Ever For a Musician with the Gift of Gab

Bryan Trembley

Account Representative, S.I.T.

String Co.

Eighty percent of his salary comes from commissions, but Bryan Trembley, 42, doesn’t see himself as a salesman. He’s just a musician who describes what he does as talking to music store owners about guitars and the weather and chicks – for long enough to get the sale.

S.I.T (which stands for Stay In Tune) guitar strings are made right here in Akron – just a few rooms away from Trembley’s sales desk. A longtime musician in a number of bands with a ‘fall-back job’ as a physical therapy assistant, Trembley used to be a S.I.T. customer who liked picking up his orders in person at the company’s South Broadway Street factory.

One day six years ago, when he came in to pick up his strings, company vice president Tim Pfouts told Trembley he was having trouble finding hard workers. At the same time, Trembley’s therapy team had recently completed a long-term contract.

Pfouts offered him a job. And Trembley – who thought he’d be learning to make strings – jumped on the offer. But Pfouts had a sales position in mind for Trembley.

“Our customers are also musicians. Bryan can speak their language. He just connects with them right out of the gate,” Pfouts says.

Trembley was already sold on S.I.T.’s strings; they’re handmade from eight or nine different metals including copper and zinc and quality-tested on site. He knew the company’s history. He knew its big-name customers (Joe Walsh was one of the earliest. The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach is among the 300 artists on the company’s roster today.)

“As far as I’m concerned, getting hired at S.I.T saved my life. Encapsulating my whole existence with music is fantastic,” Trembley says.

Research and Development That Tastes Good

Karen Gaither and Dan Mauer 

Food Scientists at Main Street Gourmet

There’s a good chance that those fresh baked cookies, brownies or granola at your favorite restaurant chain or grocer were actually created with a little help from the scientific wizardry of Dan Mauer and Karen Gaither at Main Street Gourmet on Muffin Lane in Cuyahoga Falls.

At any given time, Mauer, 51, and Gaither, 40, who serve as director and project manager of research and development, work on two dozen projects – 80 percent of which involve custom formulations. Their peanut butter bars with chocolate ganache and marble pound cakes are baked on-site in the factory, but most of the products they sell are shipped out in batter form to be baked fresh at the stores that sell them.

The pair has created exclusive recipes for 18 different blueberry muffins alone — tweaking flours, textures, flavor profiles, sweeteners and even mixing methods for different results.

“There’s a lot of trial and error,” Mauer says, adding that he tests new recipes in five pound batches and then scales them up for anywhere from 350- to 700-pound manufacturing runs.

Requests from clients change with every food craze. A few years ago, “functional” muffins with antioxidants or probiotics were in demand. Now, all-natural “clean label” products with ingredients like fresh butter and “nothing you can’t pronounce” are all the rage. Mauer and Gaither are working on perfecting a flourless muffin and trying more products that use ancient grains.

Neither Mauer nor Gaither can pick a favorite product. “They’re like our children,” she jokes.

And as for the fringe benefits of so many test batches:

“My husband complains that I bring too much home,” says Gaither.

“My wife complains that I don’t bring home enough,” says Mauer.

Looking Good Shouldn’t Be Toxic

Bill Marthaler and Christine Vadala

Founder and Co-owner of GlamNatural Cosmetics

Convinced that beauty, as we know it, can be dangerous, Bill Marthaler and Christine Vadala are on a mission to take toxic ingredients out of the makeup and skin care products women use every day. The pair manufacture and market GlamNatural Cosmetics from their third floor factory/office in Akron’s Global Business Accelerator.

Marthaler, 56, who calls himself a lab rat, is a chemist. He helped to invent a well-known instant hand sanitizer and worked for a Japanese company that sold ingredients to the cosmetics industry. Vadala, 40, had a successful soft drink marketing career before earning a pink Cadillac from a beauty products megabrand.

The pair met through a mutual friend, Rob Droman, a serial-entrepreneur who is not only the money behind their joint venture but also provides the food-safe colors they use in their growing line of all-natural foundations, shadows, blushes, eye shadows and night creams.

Marthaler mixes up his concentrated hydrating products in the same kind of commercial mixers you find in bakeries. He and Vadala pump the product into bottles and fill each order by hand.

All GlamNatural products follow the company’s “BodySafe” standard, which means they’re hypo-allergenic, vegan, gluten free, cruelty free, talc free, formaldehyde free, mineral oil free, petroleum free, harmful emulsifier free, phthalates free, sodium lauryl sulfate free, synthetic dye free and synthetic fragrance free.

Looking at the product labels, you’ll find only a handful of ingredients, including Shea butter, jojoba wax and grapeseed oil in their purest forms. Marthaler has left the water out of GlamNatural products, which makes them super-concentrated as well as chemical- and preservative-free.

Because GlamNatural products are EU (European Union) Cosmetics Directive compliant, the company has landed a deal to sell its products on QVC in Germany this November. The company also created a private-label hand sanitizer for HSN’s Joy Mangano.

Now, Marthaler and Vadala are launching a GlamNatural anti-aging moisturizer and working with the city of Akron to find a store front/manufacturing facility. In the meantime, their products are available online at glamnatural.com and vegancuts.com, Vadala says.

Marthaler’s experience taught him that big cosmetics companies always looked for ingredients to make their products look or feel better. “But never in 27 years did I hear any of them say, ‘Make it safer for women,’” he says. He and Vadala are out to change all that.

Someone to Watch Over You

Jerry Hissem

Chief Pilot, Akron-based airship “The Spirit of Goodyear”

Weather permitting, Captain Jerry Hissem spends about 120 days in the air each year.

NASCAR races, big games, the Preakness and the AirVenture Oshkosh are regular stops on his schedule, but few events can top the energy he feels from his seat 1,500 feet above Ohio Stadium while watching 100,000 football fans do the wave. And back home, corn mazes and a “Hi Blimp!” sign painted on a flat roof near Route 91 at Canton Road make his everyday job a lot more fun.

Some days, Hissem says, flying in The Spirit of Goodyear airship feels like floating in a bubble. “But it’s large and kind of slow to react – so flying it is like steering a big cargo ship up in the sky,” he says.

When he’s not in the air, Hissem maintains the airship and prepares it for future travels. At 30 miles per hour, the blimp can travel about 200 to 250 miles per day. A 15-person ground crew meets the pilots at their destinations.

Born in Cuyahoga Falls, Hissem had dreamed of flying the blimp since he was a boy. He landed his dream job more than 15 years ago and has been the pilot in charge here since 2010. He started out as an aviation mechanic on the blimp flight crew in Florida. When a pilot position opened up back home in Suffield, he transferred here and learned to fly. 

Over the years, Hissem figures he’s flown about 3,000 passengers, with David Letterman and Kurt Russell as two of the most famous.

“But every passenger is a celebrity in our eyes,” he says. “We’re not just stick-and-rudder pilots. We like to show off the blimp. We’re glad to talk about it and glad to fly it for people.”

Potential pilots need a commercial license in small general aviation aircraft (airplanes and helicopters) before coming to Goodyear. Then, Hissem says, the company provides training (six months to a year, which equals 300 to 400 hours) on how to fly a blimp.

This Crisis Simulation Was Brought To You By . . .

Charles Rice

Simulation Technician at Austen BioInnovation Institute

Emergencies happen. But Charles Rice, a simulation technician at the Austen BioInnovation Institute (ABIA) in downtown Akron, is part of a team that gives medical professionals and rescue workers a chance to practice their responses before they’re put to the test in real life-and-death situations. 

In a job that seems almost surreal – with equal parts health care, information technology and Hollywood – Rice works with a cast of high fidelity mannequins that can do everything from blink and breathe to cough and gag. The pediatric mannequin says things like, “I want my mommy.” A female mannequin named Noelle lets student doctors try their hand at delivering twins.

Working with Simulation Specialist Scott Atkinson and a team of supervising doctors, Rice sets up and tears down emergency simulations at ABIA and nearby hospitals. During the events, he runs computers that can change the mannequins’ vitals and responses while being treated.

One day, he might be using elaborate theatrical makeup to make live actors look injured before hazardous chemical training for first responders. The next, he’s executing a ‘fire in the operating room’ scenario to test surgical teams on the execution of protocols that can increase patient safety and save lives.

Rice, 22, came to ABIA as a receptionist/intern while studying to be a paralegal. When he discovered the emergency preparedness work going on there, he knew he wanted to be a part of it. Atkinson took him on as an apprentice, and since then, he’s been immersing himself in the job, working long hours and learning everything he can.

Simulation technology requires long hours, a willingness to take on all kinds of unexpected tasks and a good sense of humor, Rice says.

“But I’m the kind of guy who learns by being thrown into the fire,” he says. “So for me, it’s a great job.”

The University of Akron has created a new associate degree program in simulation technology to train more people like Rice who are called on to do everything from scenario building and room set-up to technical, IT and audio/visual support. Classes begin this fall.

 We would like to thank all the Cool Jobs participants this year for putting up with rain, wind and mosquitos so we could photograph them for this article. A special thank you to our cover girl, Mia Saltis, Creative Influence/Social Media Director/Customer Relations Manager for GlamNatural Cosmetics, for not being too concerned about the lightning.

/ Jane Day is a freelance writer and video producer living in Fairlawn. She is always on the lookout for the next great gig.