James Hannaham is a writer, a visual artist, or both, as well as a lapsed performer. His novel Delicious Foods (Little, Brown 2015) won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. His criticism, essays, and profiles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, Spin, Out, Buzzfeed, 4Columns, and Travel+Leisure. He received a 2015 Pushcart Prize for a piece that appeared in Gigantic. A co-founder of Elevator Repair Service, he lived with them from 1991–1999 and worked with them from 1991–2002. As a visual artist, has exhibited text-based visual art at Open Source Gallery, 490 Atlantic, Kimberley-Klark, and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, and won Best in Show at Main Street Arts’ Biblio Spectaculum. His book Pilot Impostor, a multigenre book inspired by the work of Fernando Pessoa, came out at the end of 2021 to considerable acclaim, and will be followed by a novel, in August 2022, entitled Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta.

Doug Curtis has been one of Elevator Repair Service’s biggest fans for nearly 20 years. Professionally, Doug is a trial lawyer currently based in Chicago. Over the course of his career, he has worked both as a partner at global law firms and as an in-house lawyer at two international companies, Reuters and WeWork. Doug lived and worked in New York for 20 years, and his pro bono work for Elevator Repair Service in 2006 was his first introduction to the company.  Doug joined the ERS board in 2011, and two years later became board Chair, a position he held until relocating to Chicago in 2018. He remains an active board member for ERS.  He also serves as the Vice-Chair of the board of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. Doug earned his JD from Harvard Law School, and his AB from Harvard College. He has three grown children, Catherine, Elizabeth and William.