Meet the Team

Kay Chaapel

Kay Chaapel started working for Acorn in 2014 on the Market Watch team. She started her career in information technology in 1974, working for the Department of the Navy in the data processing field. This new field was in the dinosaur years, when programs were punched on 80 column cards and sent to a huge mainframe that took a large, cooled room to compile and test. After many jobs and innovations over 30 years, she took an early retirement and shortly after started working for Pheasant Field B&B. Her duties included gardening, producing newsletters, basic administrative duties, and occasionally inn-sitting at the 8-room inn. In her spare time, Kay enjoys reading, kayaking, walking and hiking.

Wendy Huggins

Wendy has managed many different companies over the last 30 years across a wide variety of industries from a financial loan company to a golf course construction company, and many in between. From the time she landed her first management job at the age of 18 at an Eckerd Photo Lab, her passion has always been in helping to organize, implement and execute the visions of the business owner. She currently lives on property and has managed Country Woods Inn in Glen Rose TX for 8 years where she has sought out and devoured all the knowledge she can find regarding the travel and lodging industry, which obviously brought her to Acorn Marketing! She is also the Admin and VP of Membership for the Texas Bed & Breakfast Association where she works with the Board to promote and assist their member inns in their business efforts. Wendy has been married to her husband Chris for 14 years and has a wonderful 12 year old son, Bradley, that she homeschools.

Josh Kolb

Josh Kolb is one of the newest, yet long-term, members of the team here at Acorn Marketing.  He has always been a part of the family business, but now officially a member of the Acorn Team. Josh recently graduated from Colorado Mesa University with two Bachelor’s degrees, in Management and Entrepreneurship. Josh’s specialties at Acorn are conference planning and innovation. Josh lives in Colorado and enjoys hiking and biking all over the American West.

Lori Schiraga

Lori, along with her husband and dog, moved back to her hometown on Cape Cod from Santa Barbara, CA in 2002. She owned and ran a small seasonal B&B on Cape Cod for 16 years. She joined Acorn as a do-it-yourself client in 2017 and succeeded in moving her inn’s Google listing from page 4 to page 1 with the education, advice, and guidance of Acorn staff through Acorn University. She became part of the Acorn Team as a Market Watch project manager in 2020. Lori enjoys travel, gardening, camping, nature, good food, friends, and family.

Scott Hall

Scott Hall comes to Acorn with a varied background that makes him uniquely qualified for our Marketwatch team. After obtaining a degree in Packaging Science, Scott worked in engineering and management roles in the Medical Device and Pharmaceutical industries, until he decided it was time for a change. Wanting to live somewhere that he and his wife would want to vacation, they bought the seasonal Pilgrim’s Inn in Deer Isle Maine. The experience fulfilled their desire to own an inn, but it was time to move closer to family after living away for 22 years, so they sold the inn in 2022. He misses all the fresh local seafood that Maine had to offer! Being able to relate to what clients are experiencing as a former inn owner, combined with Scott’s experience as an engineer in analyzing data, is what he enjoys about working with his Acorn clients. The varied elements in the work with Acorn clients keeps the work dynamic interesting. Innkeepers are such a great group of people to work with and share ideas.

Monica Edwards

Monica and her husband Daniel had their 1st BnB experience in 1995, when one of Daniel’s coworkers gave him a gift certificate that he had won at a local elementary school festival. The rest is history, in 1997 they purchased a historic 1910 Colonial Revival styled Mansion and converted it into a 5-bedroom bed and breakfast that also hosts events. Monica has been active in and held many positions in various professional Innkeeping and tourism related organizations during her career as an innkeeper. She loves working with students in the hospitality programs at area colleges. The Inn has won numerous local and national awards; most recently they were recognized as the Winner of NC’s WRAL Voters’ Choice Awards in the category of Hotel/Vacation rental and the “Best Place to Stay” in the 2023 Durham Magazine’s 13th Annual Best of Durham Contest. Monica attributes most of their inn’s success to the knowledge that she’s gained from being an Acorn client. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge and recently joined the Acorn team to help her fellow innkeepers. In her spare time Monica enjoys trying new recipes, entertaining, reading, travelling and spoiling her grandson Xavier and her Siamese cats.

Jevon Wright

Jevon Wright is a second generation innkeeper, joining his family in running the Grandison Inn in Oklahoma. Stepping away from the inn for a while, he enjoys performing with his local opera company, multiple barbershop quartets, and assisting in the leadership of the OKC barbershop chorus.

Serving in any and every way possible in his family’s inn since 1987, it seemed a natural step to progress into Internet marketing and web development. Studying at Oklahoma State University, it became clear that webpages and coding were a passion and a joy. Joining Acorn in early 2016, he continues to grow as a developer with each new project, and is grateful to be involved with such a fantastic company as they create beautiful websites for the hospitality industry.

Roy Forsberg

In 2013, Roy and his wife Sue left the corporate world and bought the Wolf Cove Inn, a luxury B&B in Maine. In those years, they grew the business from a sleepy little inn to THE destination in the western Maine lakes region, growing revenue 8-fold. Along the way, Roy was recognized as the 2015 BedandBreakfast.com B&B Marketer of the Year.

Formerly, he was a high tech R&D executive, manager, and engineer for 30 years. Roy brought hundreds of new technology products to the marketplace in such diverse applications as speech recognition, video conferencing, high performance computing platforms and internet switching and routing technology. Roy has his bachelors in computer science form Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and master in computer science from Fitchburg State College. Roy served as an officer in the US Navy post-college before embarking on his high tech career.

Trisha Busch

Trisha joined the Acorn Marketing team in 2014 and then also moved into the position of New Development Project Manager soon after. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Education with a minor in French from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, AB, Canada, and spent 12 years teaching in the elementary classroom. She lives in Jenison, MI with her husband Steve and two sons, Jadon and Lucas. She is actively involved in her church where her husband is the worship pastor, and her family loves spending time outdoors and hanging out with family and friends.

Dee Fegan

Dee is very active in the tourism industry in PA serving on the Board of Directors of the PA Restaurant & Lodging Association. In 2010, Dee was named the PA Innkeeper of the Year by the PA Tourism & Lodging Association. She was one of the founders of the PA Association of Bed & Breakfast Inns (PABBI) and was the Chair of the Board of Directors for 5 years. She was honored for her leadership in founding PABBI by being awarded the “Champion Award” from the Professional Association of Innkeepers International. In 2016, she was presented with the Tourism Leadership Award by the PA Society for Tourism. In March of 2018, Dee was honored with the “Founders’ Award” by the Association of Independent Hospitality Professionals (AIHP). She also serves as the choir director at her church. In her spare time she loves to hike and kayak.

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie joined the Acorn staff in March 2022 as a Project Manager. She has had her own Bed and Breakfast Inn and Vacation Rentals since 2002 and has been an Acorn client since she started her business. She has learned a lot about how to work on her own website from the years of being an Acorn client and attending dozens of Acorn webinars and is happy to be able to help assist others developing their own websites. Debbie lives in Colorado, and in addition to continuing to run her own vacation rentals and tea room, she stays busy with being involved with her 17 grandchildren, and enjoys the outdoors, camping, and traveling.

Marcy Talbert

Since Marcy joined the Acorn Marketing team in 2003, she has had one goal – to assist our clients in developing their site content according to Acorn’s guidelines for achieving the best possible search engine optimization (SEO). She graduated summa cum laude from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania with a B.S. in English Writing and a minor in Communication. Marcy lives in a circa 1930 stone cottage with her family and a menagerie of furry and feathered friends in the piney woods of rural Western PA.

Kim Skinner

Kim has been working for Acorn in the background for many years, and from October 2018 through February 2023 was our Support Team Manager. Kim will now be working to support our New Website Team.

Duane Ford

Duane came to Acorn in 2008 as a technical support manager. Duane has been working intermittently with computer systems and related technologies since 1980 and has received credentials in IBM mainframe applications programming, operations and system management, and he has most recently received Comp TIA A+ certification from Colorado Technical University. Prior to his work with Acorn, he was a senior member of the technical staff at a software development company located here in Colorado Springs, CO.

Debbie Howard

Debbie joined the Acorn team as a writer in May 2019. She, along with her husband Rich, is a 20-year veteran innkeeper, having owned and operated an 11-room inn in North Conway, NH and a 4-room luxury inn on Cape Cod. She is the former director of Education for The Travel Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to training and educating travel professionals in the hospitality industry. With a passion for writing, Debbie is the author of Travel Sales and Customer Service, Hospitality and Tourism Marketing, Customer Service Excellence, and several Destination Geography texts. An avid traveler, she earned her sea legs as a member of the cruise staff aboard several international cruise lines, which offered her the opportunity to trek by camel to the pyramids of Giza, sail 1,000 miles down the Amazon River, and shop the spice market in Istanbul. Debbie and her husband continue to travel extensively throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, South America, and Australia when time allows. They are currently happily living in Punta Gorda Isles, Florida, aka Punta Gorgeous.

Peggy Hauser

Peggy joined Acorn in November 2020 as a writer after 18 years owning and running an 8-room historic B&B in Western Pennsylvania. Her career prior to innkeeping was 25 years in financial institutions, including compliance, credit management and operations. She is an accomplished chef, cyclist, and cross-country skier, and loves learning obscure facts about everything.

Emma Aspelin

Emma joined the Acorn team in June of 2022 as a Content Management Writer. She graduated from Colorado Mesa University with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Technology in Spring 2022. Emma grew up in Minnesota until moving to Colorado for college. She enjoys outdoor recreation, dogs, photography, painting, crocheting, skiing, climbing Colorado’s 14’ers, and too many more hobbies to list!

Marina Biggio

Haley Hahn

Haley is a graduate of Colorado Mesa University with a BBA in Business Marketing and Management. She is a Colorado native passionate about the hospitality industry, specifically wedding catering and event planning, and is now excited to create meaningful marketing for Bed and Breakfast and Inn clients! She loves traveling, being outside, and spending time with friends and family.

Courtney Moore

Courtney joined the Acorn team in December of 2022 and has been a Content Management Writer ever since! She graduated from Colorado Mesa University with her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science & Technology in Spring of 2023. She is now pursuing her Master’s in Environmental Law and Policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School and is set to graduate in the summer of 2024. Writing blogs and other marketing content has been a breath of fresh air and a creative outlet for this science and public policy student. She also enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time outside. From New Mexico to Colorado to Vermont, she doesn’t know where she will end up next!

Jevon Wright

Jevon Wright is a second generation innkeeper, joining his family in running the Grandison Inn in Oklahoma. Stepping away from the inn for a while, he enjoys performing with his local opera company, multiple barbershop quartets, and assisting in the leadership of the OKC barbershop chorus.

Serving in any and every way possible in his family’s inn since 1987, it seemed a natural step to progress into Internet marketing and web development. Studying at Oklahoma State University, it became clear that webpages and coding were a passion and a joy. Joining Acorn in early 2016, he continues to grow as a developer with each new project, and is grateful to be involved with such a fantastic company as they create beautiful websites for the hospitality industry.