Abby Edema

Everyone knows about the British monarchy, but what about southern royalty? Well, if you’ve met Abby Edema, then you’ve met the deep south equivalent of a duchess! (Or maybe a baroness? At the very least, we’re pretty sure she’s a noblewoman.)

As a descendant of the Murfree family—as in, Murfreesboro, Tennessee—Abby’s family legacy includes a former Tennessee governor on each side and a magnificent family mansion-turned-museum that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Commoners (ahem… that’s us) can visit the museum for Victorian tea and observe portraits of Abby’s family members from generations past. Abby’s portrait isn’t on the wall, but in true noble fashion, she says she’s “cool with that.”

Growing up in Nashville, Abby’s dream was to put her unusually high foot arches to good use by becoming a professional ballerina. Unfortunately, that dream was derailed by a small-town vendetta against dance (where’s Ren McCormack when you need him?), so after rage-dancing in her local warehouse to clear her mind, Abby and her high arches gave up on the whole ballet thing and transitioned to comedy sketch writing with her friends. In school, she joined the middle school dance team (take that, Reverend Moore!), ran on her high school’s track and cross country teams, served as yearbook editor, and was elected junior class president.

After graduating from Auburn University, Abby worked in a flower shop for several years, followed by several more years working as the retail manager in a chocolate shop. Both of these sound like the setting of a Nora Ephron movie, but how to tie that into the Footloose references from earlier? If only she’d had an email pen pal who turned out to be Ren McCormack. Oh, well.

In her role at Uptick, Abby assists with many critical elements of our business. She is often the first human interaction our prospective clients have with us when they’re ready to set up a meeting (all that customer service at the chocolate and flower shops make her the ideal person for this), and she handles the scheduling of nearly everything for our sales team. Additionally, she creates every proposal that goes out the door, plans and executes kickoff meetings with our new clients, and makes sure every sales process follows the right steps from start to finish. Without her, we’d be like the town of Bomont without the big dance scene at the end: Tragically incomplete.