Things to know about Jess, presented in the third person…

Jess has been known to curse…a lot, is a certified yoga instructor, and softens to mush around his daughter—who is now in charge. (Note: Recent updates suggest the swearing has been significantly curbed due to toddler parroting -a necessary and responsible adjustment.

Fact: There are bad jokes and there are dad jokes—but there’s no such thing as a bad dad joke.

In all seriousness, Jess is the founder and creative force behind Model Citizen, where he helps brands bring ideas to life through merchandise, e-commerce, and thoughtful creative strategy. His career has been shaped by a mix of curiosity, instinct, and a hands-on approach to building—whether that’s developing products, designing experiences, or creating systems that help brands grow from the ground up and scale.

With over 20 years of experience across artist management, live event marketing, and brand development, Jess has worked with companies like Live Nation, Lyft, Jars Cannabis, and Greyson Clothiers, along with hundreds of other businesses and entrepreneurs. He thrives on collaboration and takes pride in working alongside talented people to create smart, creative solutions that actually move the needle.

Taking pride in his community, and enjoys working on culturally relevant, impactful lifestyle projects. James is a graphic, digital designer by trade who’s work has been featured in select galleries in NY and Detroit, including his featured exhibit at the DIA.

James founded his own lifestyle clothing brand, Eight One Zero in 2018, a nod to his hometown of Flint, MI. He has also served as creative director for Jars Cannabis, Detroit vs. Everybody, and is currently associate creative director at unicultural agency UWG. 

Mar Manzanares is a photographer and producer from Mexico City who currently resides in Detroit, Michigan. Mar loves fashion, food, and snow sports.

Mar has produced, styled, and shot for notable companies such as Live Nation, Walmart, MooseJaw, Bon Bon Bon, Paxahau, Jars Cannabis, and More. 

Alex Zurowski is a man of many talents and will speak on technical knowledge that the normal person does not understand, aka he geeks out on analytics, coding, and large scale custom design fabrications. He’s just built different, that’s what makes Alex such an intangible asset to our MC team. 

Alex has served as Lead Digital Marketing Strategist and analyst for Social Sound System for over 10 years, and also ran his own custom fabrication shop producing large and small scale custom fabrications and set designs for companies like Hulu, Disney, and Fox. 

Jason has been creating Emmy Award Winning , compelling video content -writing, producing, directing, and editing video in Metro Detroit for over two decades, and is the founder and executive director of Collective Age Media, a boutique agency specializing in video marketing.

Jason’s written, produced, directed and edited projects for countless clients over the past 25 years. He’s directed hundreds of TV commercials, he’s created Emmy Award winning work for an Opera House, he’s produced a feature length sports documentary for suicide prevention that’s shown nationally in high schools, he’s been trusted by automotive execs to create video campaigns raising nine figure investments, and he’s directed Emmy nominated documentaries for national non-profits. In years past, he worked within the metro Detroit music scene directing countless music videos, garnered peoples’ choice awards for “Best Music Video Director” (Real Detroit Weekly 2012 & 2013) and “Best Filmmaker” (Metro Times 2015), and directed an internationally recognized three part documentary for PAXAHAU highlighting the first decade of Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival, Movement. Jason’s an expert at streamlining the video production process and maximizing ROI for a wide variety of clientele.

Spending a 20 year career with big Detroit Ad agencies, James struck out on his own in 2009 to focus on providing digital marketing services aligned with Google’s advertising products. A Google Partner Agency since 2010, James has worked on a large variety of accounts from retail to healthcare to service industries for both local and national firms including General Motors, US Navy, PNC Bank, and Farmers Insurance.

James’ primary focus is Search Keyword Advertising on Google and Bing, and also ensuring Client websites are properly measured using Google Analytics, Tag Manager and now GA4. He also manages Display and YouTube ads as well as LinkedIn’s advertising products on behalf of his B2B clients.

A rabid volunteer, James is an elected Trustee of his local library as well as a Meals on Wheels delivery driver for seniors in his community. He eagerly awaits the coming of Spring each year so that he may tend his native plants, trees, vegetables, fruits and flowers that he grows on his bit of acreage an hour North of Detroit.