GUE Operations

Jarrod Jablonski

president

Jarrod is an avid explorer, researcher, author, and instructor who teaches and dives in oceans and caves around the world. Trained as a geologist, Jarrod is the founder and president of GUE and CEO of Halcyon and Extreme Exposure while remaining active in conservation, exploration, and filming projects worldwide. His explorations regularly place him in the most remote locations in the world, including several world record excursions at 300ft to cave penetrations in excess of 24,000feet/7km; these dives include bottom times of 12 hours with total immersions near 30 hours. Jarrod is also an author with dozens of publications, including three books and several forthcoming.

ADMINISTRATION

Corey Jablonski

executive director

Corey Jablonski has been with GUE since 2002, when administration and bookkeeping were handled by only one person. Over the years GUE has grown, and she now manages the administrative staff as well as GUE’s finances. She was certified to dive by her brother, Jarrod, both in 1995 and then later after she came to work for GUE in 2005, under GUE’s first beta Rec 1 program. Since then, she has been privileged to travel to, and dive in, some amazing places, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Before coming to GUE, she worked as a high school English teacher. She graduated cum laude from Florida State University with two Bachelor’s degrees and a Master’s in Educational Administration.

Kady Smith

OPERATIONS MANAGER

Kady began working for GUE on a part-time basis in late 2007 helping with miscellaneous office duties. Over the next several years she was given additional responsibilities and gradually moved to a full-time position. Today her time is spent working with instructors, communicating with students and members, light editing and bookkeeping duties, course material administration, and other ad hoc administrative projects that keep her on her toes. Kady graduated from the University of Florida in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Minor in Mass Communication Studies.

Andreas Hagberg

WEBMASTER & PROGRAMMER

Andreas has been working for GUE since 2006 with different iterations of the website, the software packages (Deco Planner, GMP, DiveLog) and various other technical projects. Andreas started diving in 1993 in Sweden, and after relocating to Florida he has explored several miles of new cave passage. He also enjoys documenting those unique environments with cameras and various mapping tools, which have enabled him to contribute to various Project Baseline projects. Before starting to work at GUE, Andreas worked as a Software Development Consultant in Sweden. Andreas holds a Master’s degree in Software Engineering.

Sandra Meier

OFFICE ASSISTANT: SALES

Sandra has been working with GUE since 2019. Their main tasks include sales bookkeeping, order processing, and store management, as well as creation and posting of website content.
Their role is flexible, and also includes general office duties and new projects as they arise.
Sandra has prior experience with content creation and product photography, and before coming to GUE they worked as a Registered Nurse at UF Health Shands Hospital. 
 

Amy Mayhew

OFFICE ASSISTANT: ADMINISTRATION

Amy has been working for GUE since 2019. She happily assists students, members, and instructors with their questions and needs, performs general office duties, and enjoys taking on the various projects assigned to her to help GUE thrive and grow. Her background as a small business owner and her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Maine have helped her realize her dream of working for a nonprofit and being a part of the solution.

EDUCATION

Dorota Czerny

VICE PRESIDENT/FOUNDATIONAL ADMINISTRATOR

Dorota has been involved in the dive industry since 1999, when she first became a scuba instructor. What started as a mere fascination developed into a profession when, in 2001, she decided to quit teaching at a university and start teaching diving in Egypt. Over the next 10 years, she not only gained the experience of several thousand dives but also developed into a skilled dive educator and dive operations manager. Her constant striving for excellence brought her to GUE in 2005, and since then has been committed to the development of the organization and its training at the highest level. Within GUE, Dorota is a member of the BOD, Instructor Evaluator, Recreational and Technical instructor; she holds a Master's degree in Political and Social Sciences, as well as a degree in Journalism.

Gemma Thomas

RECREATIONAL ADMINISTRATOR

Gemma has a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge and learnt to dive when she moved to Singapore in 2009. Her first dives were with the GUE community, and since then she has been involved in local projects and became a tech diver. Since 2016, Gemma has been teaching the GUE recreational programs and building comminutues accross the region. 

Kirill Egorov

Cave ADMINISTRATOR

Kirill graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University as a teacher of Physics in 1999, and attended a course of archaeology at Moscow State University. These two specialties allowed him to participate in multiple scientific research programs, including an archaeological and textile research project at the Moscow Kremlin Museums and Viking Age textile research at the Russian Natural and Historical Heritage Institute. After his first try-dive in 2000, Kirill was totally amazed with the underwater world, and made it his hobby first, and a profession later. He became a PADI recreational and technical instructor in 2003-2004 and joined GUE in 2005. Since that moment he has concentrated on two main passions: diving and teaching diving. Kirill is currently teaching for GUE at the Cave 2 and Tech 2 levels and working on GUE training materials. He resides in High Springs, Florida, which allows him to cave dive as much as possible while pursuing a new hobby, underwater photography.

RICHARD LUNDGREN

Rebreather Administrator

Richard is the founder of Scandinavia’s Baltic Sea Divers and Ocean Discovery diving groups, and is a member of GUE’s Board of Directors. He has participated in numerous underwater expeditions worldwide and is one of Europe’s most experienced trimix divers. With more than 4000 dives to his credit, Richard Lundgren was a member of the GUE expeditions to dive the Britannic (sister ship of the ill-fated Titanic) in 1997 and 1999; has been involved in numerous projects to explore mines and caves in Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In 1997, in arctic conditions, he performed the longest cave dive ever carried out in Scandinavia. Richard’s other exploration work has included the 1999 filming of the famous submarine, M1, for the BBC; the side scan sonar surveys of the Spanish gold galleons off Florida’s Key West in 2000; and the search for the Admiral’s Fleet, an ongoing project that has already led to the discovery of more than 40 virgin wrecks perfectly preserved in the cold waters of the Swedish Baltic Sea.

GRAHAM BLACKMORE

Technical Administrator

Graham has a PhD in Marine Biology and has been tech diving since the late 1990s. He teaches exclusively for GUE and is lucky enough to develop instructors and run mostly tech and CCR classes all over the world. Graham loves all diving but being British, his real passion is wrecks and he spends as much of his non-teaching time as possible diving (often deep) wrecks in the middle of the ocean. 

MARKETING

Nico Lurot

Content Creator and Editor

Nico has been creating content and managing GUE's Youtube channel since 2019, and the following year also moved into GUE.tv creative work with his Creative Imagery for Divers series. Nico has been a GUE diver since 2017, but started diving when he was 9 years old. He opened Thailand's first ever underwater imaging academy in 2009, and worked alongside media outlets like National Geographic and Discovery channel, helping to capture underwater photos and videos of sharks all over South East Asia. His main goals in GUE are to edit our ever-growing content stream, grow the reach of our Youtube channel and share his creative knowledge of the underwater arts with GUE's community.

INDEPTH

Mike Menduno

Editor in Chief for InDepth

Michael Menduno is an award-winning reporter and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for 30 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” His magazine “aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving"(1990-1996) helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving. He also produced the first Tek, EUROTek and ASIATek conferences, and organized Rebreather Forums 1.0 and 2.0. Michael received the OZTEK Media Excellence Award in 2011, the EUROTek Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and the TEKDive USA Media Award in 2018.

QUEST

Jesper Kjøller

Editor in Chief for Quest

Originally a professional musician, Jesper fell in love with diving almost 30 years ago. He made a career change and became an instructor in 1994 and PADI Course Director in 1999 when he was offered the editor chair of the Scandinavian Diving Magazine DYK. Jesper became a GUE instructor in 2011, and in 2015 he moved to Dubai to apply his skills in underwater storytelling and imagery as Marketing Manager of Deep Dive Dubai. From Dubai he travels the world to teach and report for international dive magazines and to participate in dive projects like the yearly Mars field studies in the Baltic Sea or deep wreck exploration in Egypt. In 2021 he began as Editor in Chief of Quest, the GUE member journal.