Helpful Resources

One of the first people I met at FOREVER's Pittsburgh headquarters was Shelley Murray. I had traveled there seeking guidance about the best way to archive the extraordinary family photos and documents I had unearthed from a box discovered in my attic. Thanks to Shelley’s clear-headed explanation of FOREVER's features, I quickly understood that FOREVER’s platform was the perfect solution for my project. What’s more, I recognized that FOREVER could benefit professional photographers as photo organizing and archiving are ideal services to offer to their clients.

Since that meeting in 2016, Shelley continues to be my go-to resource for all things FOREVER. As part of the FOREVER corporate team for seven years, she helped to make the platform what it is today and training and education clients on how to use FOREVER. As a conference speaker, Shelley has helped attendees understand the realities of cloud storage and how to make an educated decision about preserving their memories. Shelley has been a Certified Professional Photo Organizer since 2014.

In 2019, Shelley left her corporate role at FOREVER to focus on serving clients through her company, Photo Organizing Services. She teaches DIY Photo Organizing using FOREVER, and she offers a concierge service in which she does all of this work for her clients. This companying photos. Rescuing Photos new niche.

Along with her professional pursuits, Shelley keeps busy as the mother of four children; she enjoys supporting their activities and participating in outdoor adventures. She has a passion for making memories with her family and celebrating them in photos. She especially loves learning more about family history and individual stories when working with her clients.

You can see Shelley at work in this video:
Rescuing Photos & Telling Family Stories

See more FOREVER educational videos from Sherry:

Caroline is a Swedish Certified Photo Organizer and Personal Historian, specializing in digital photo organizing and family history. She is the owner of The Swedish Organizer, LLC, a company that provides customized family history solutions to clients all over the world. A native of Ystad, Sweden, Caroline has a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communications from Hawaii Pacific University, and a Masters Degree in Media Management from Columbia College Chicago. She currently divides her time between the United States, and Sweden. She runs the blogs OrganizingPhotos.net and SearchingScandinavia.com, and offers popular online family history courses over at CoursesbyCaroline.com. Caroline is a member of the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO), the National Genealogical Society, the Photo Managers, the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and all of their respective Chicago chapters.

Among the many treasures I discovered inside a mysterious box in my attic in 2016, were 20 studio portraits of my parents’ ancestors going back three generations. They had been placed in a folder that contained brief biographies. As I began to archive them in my FOREVER account, I had many questions about these early pioneers from the southern states. So I subscribed to MyHeritage.com, an online genealogy research platform. It was beneficial in linking one generation to the supposed next generation. However, the more I learned, the more I wanted to know, and the more contradictions I found in tracing my direct-line ancestors.

At the height of my frustration, Shelley Murray invited Caroline Guntur, also a FOREVER user, to present a ZOOM program on genealogy to an Ambassador team, of which I am a member. What I learned from Caroline was so helpful that I engaged her to verify what I thought to be true. More important, she investigated the generation at which I had lost confidence in the research platform. What I learned is that REAL genealogy is not a guessing game. You determine your lineage based on foundational records, such as census documents; birth, marriage, and death certificates; and even land transfers, wills, and newspaper articles. These details combine to create an air-tight case that the relative you are claiming is genuinely yours. Her research is ongoing, and I’m thrilled that I have learned so much about the life and times of the brave — and sometimes flawed — pioneer men and women from whom I am descended. I can heartily recommend the educational videos to which you can subscribe at Caroline’s Organizing Photos website. You’ll find that her work and her credentials are most impressive:

Caroline is a Swedish Certified Photo Organizer and Personal Historian, specializing in digital photo organizing and family history. She is the owner of The Swedish Organizer, LLC, which provides customized family history solutions to clients all over the world. A native of Ystad, Sweden, Caroline has a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Communications from Hawaii Pacific University and a Masters Degree in Media Management from Columbia College Chicago. She currently divides her time between the United States, and Sweden. She runs the blogs OrganizingPhotos.net and SearchingScandinavia.com, and offers popular online family history courses over at CoursesbyCaroline.com. Caroline is a member of the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO), the National Genealogical Society, the Photo Managers, the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), and all of their respective Chicago chapters.

When the Federal government began to offer grants and loans to small businesses forced to shut down during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, many lost out because they could not produce the requisite documents that proved they were eligible for these funds. The same thing occurred in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster. However, those photographers who used SuccessWare to manage their business affairs had the data they needed almost instantly.

During his development of SuccessWare’s financial module, chief design engineer, Jeff Grann, asked me to consult with him on the various reports required by studio owners to understand their businesses’ on-demand financial position, and what he created was remarkable.

Today, SuccessWare is the industry’s ONLY fully integrated financial and business management software that encompasses all vital business-control needs. These include business planning, product pricing, scheduling, client and prospect tracking, order tracking, bill paying, and complete financial management and reporting of Income, Expenses, and Profit. Everything you need is always in one place: no double entries, hunting for cheat sheets, etc. I’ve lived through the days when you had to do daily hand entries and spend three days each month to hand-create your financial records. Things improved with computers, but you still had to work in three or four applications to create useful reports.

With SuccessWare, once you enter data and pay your bills, reports are automatic, and this is the way it has to be for busy, successful people. When you look around the photography industry to find well-managed, profitable businesses, it’s no coincidence that most are SuccessWare users.

To get a brief overview of SuccessWare’s feature, go to this video.

Those who have attended my business classes over the last 25 years know that I never recommend a product unless I use it. Usually, I have first-hand knowledge of its history and management. FOREVER^® CEO and Founder Glen Meakem was kind enough to give me an enlightening interview on my first trip to FOREVER’s Pittsburgh headquarters. I was fascinated by his explanation of what prompted him to found FOREVER. In this brief video, you not only learn FOREVER’s story, but you also get a sense of Glen’s passion for the company’s mission.

Glen Meakem’s personal and business history is fascinating as well. He received his B.A. degree cum laude from Harvard University and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Early in his business career, Glen was a Manager in General Electric’s Corporate Business Development Group and was an Associate with McKinsey & Company. He also held a range of consumer marketing and product management positions for Kraft-General Foods.

He was studying for his Harvard M.B.A degree when he took a leave of absence in 1990-91 to volunteer for active military duty. He deployed as a combat engineer and platoon leader in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the First Gulf War. Glen completed his M.B.A. after returning from the war.

In 1995, Glen began his widely chronicled role as Founder, Chairman and CEO of FreeMarkets, Inc. He took the highly successful business-to-business e-commerce company public on the NASDAQ in 1995 in a record-setting IPO. At its peak, FreeMarkets had a publicly-traded market cap of $13 billion.

Glen and his team later executed a successful merger with Ariba, and the combined company subsequently incorporated into SAP. He also supported and invested in other entrepreneurs as a super-angel investor and venture capitalist. Successful investments include Kiva Systems, which is now part of Amazon, and Hotpads, which is now part of Zillow.

As Glen explains in his video, after the war, in the summer of 1991, he and his wife, Diane, recorded videos of their grandparents talking about their lives and values. It was this trip around the country to see relatives that stirred Glen’s thinking about how to preserve and share those videos and other family treasures permanently. After many years, these thoughts led to the founding of FOREVER in May of 2012.

Glen and Diane are the parents of five grown children, and the family has expanded to include two sons-in-law.