KEH Stories: Mark Maio

Every employee here at KEH has a story to tell and it’s our job to share it with you  – our customers! We are excited to re-launch KEH Stories, to give you an inside look to learn more about the KEH Camera team. Check out #KEHSpotlight each month where we’ll be showcasing new team members.  This month we interviewed our Corporate Ambassador, Mark Maio!

  How long have you been a KEH employee? Since July 2017. What excites you most about working at KEH? Having been a KEH customer since 1980, I have always recommended KEH to friends and colleagues. In all those years, neither I nor any of them have ever had a bad experience with KEH. The company represents a way of doing business that reflects my personal values and was an easy decision to accept my current position. What is your role(s)? I am the Corporate Ambassador. I represent KEH to our customers, professional photographic organizations, photography schools, and the photographic industry. Why is KEH a great place to work? In addition to my history with the company, the interaction with my fellow employees, especially those who are photographers, keeps us all connected through our passion for photography. What’s special about the customer experience at KEH? When I tell someone I work for KEH, their first reaction is “I love that company.” That’s hard to beat. Everyone I work with goes out of their way to take care of customers and it is reflected around the country by the way our customers feel about their relationship with us. For the majority of our customers, their camera isn’t just another commodity. They have a very personal connection to their equipment and by choosing to purchase from us, they feel that same personal connection to the company. How does your role at KEH help support our vision/mission? Internally I am able to interact with all the great photographers and other employees we work with at KEH and help bring their input to the management team and externally I am able to communicate our mission to our customers and professional partners.

©Mark Maio Self Portrait

Are you a photographer? What is your style? How does being a photographer help you perform your role here? Yes, I carry a camera with me constantly and I am always photographing. While most people would label my photography as documentary, I feel I am more a visual sociologist. I use my camera to study and learn about the world around me and more importantly, about myself. Are you apart of any photographic societies? Which ones and how have they shaped your career? Over my career, I have belonged to a number of photographic organizations. Earlier, being a member helped educate me in various forms of photography. As I gained more experience, I began volunteering to teach and also become officers in these organizations. What I didn’t realize at the time was that by volunteering to work for these organizations, I was actually getting an entirely different education. So much of the skills I learned by giving my “free time” to these societies, I know I use in my current position with KEH. I am currently a member of the Society for Photographic Education, the Atlanta Photography Group and the Professional Photographers of America. Do you have other special talents or hobbies?  No, photography isn’t just something I do, it is my life. I work just as hard on photography away from KEH as I do for KEH.  I am constantly working on becoming a better photographer and feel that if I live to be 100, I will never be as good as I want to be. Is there a quote you live by? “It doesn’t happen the night before”. As I continue going through life, I have learned that things happen to me when they are supposed to and for reasons that at the time I might not understand. You have no control over anything other than how you react to them.    

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