References
for Emma B.
Product | Engineering | Marketing
From Elena Hearty, Director of Engineering
It is my bittersweet honor to write this letter of recommendation for my coworker and friend of the past four years, Emma Bohorfoush. As someone who has worked in tech for over two decades, I know just how rare it is to find a partner on the Product team who not only understands the business but also goes out of her way to truly collaborate with Engineering.
I believe Emma's official title was Associate Director of Product Management, but that doesn't begin to describe everything she did for our organization:
- Technical Product Ownership: Emma doesn't just "write requirements"; she produces flawless, comprehensive documentation and high-fidelity mocks that account for both front-end user experience and complex back-end logic.
- Operational Versatility: She is remarkably un-siloed. Whether it is architecting HubSpot workflows, assisting with QA, or diving into light scripting and tech ops, Emma proactively identifies and fills gaps before they become bottlenecks.
- Vendor & Project Management: She is a fierce advocate for the timeline and the team. Emma has an exceptional ability to manage external vendors—demanding accountability where others might settle for delays—and maintains rigorous organization through meticulous roadmap planning and action-item tracking.
- Leadership & Organization: Emma owned the timeline, tasks, and planning sessions for all of our development cycles. If anything was falling behind, she was the first to communicate it to the business. Furthermore, she sent out weekly status updates to keep the entire organization aligned.
- Team Player: Simply put, Emma has your back. She is the first person to volunteer for the miscellaneous tasks that usually slow us down. Whether it's handling administrative overhead or jumping into the weeds to unblock a developer, she does whatever it takes to keep the team on track.
And yet, in spite of all these responsibilities, Emma will:
- Still find time to ask everyone how their day is going.
- Be on a first-name basis with everyone at company events.
- Joke around in Spanish with the international employees.
- Address critical alerts on the weekend or bring amazing, thoughtful gifts to her coworkers just because.
Emma's departure was a massive blow to the Engineering team. If it were up to me, she would still be leading our product efforts today, and I am certain she will become a cornerstone of whichever team she joins next.
Best,
Elena Hearty
Director of Software Engineering
Email: ehearty@placemakr.com
Phone: 301.706.9061
From Jeff Britton, Senior Principal Software Engineer
In my 20+ years as a software developer, I've worked alongside a lot of product people. Emma is one of the best I've encountered.
We worked together at Placemakr, a hospitality startup with ambitious goals and a lean team. It was the kind of environment where resourcefulness and ownership weren't optional. Emma excelled there. Together we delivered some genuinely complex work: an online booking system and checkout process that handled millions of dollars in transactions, a contactless check-in kiosk built for properties operating with a limited staffing model, a web app that allowed guests to access their rooms and common areas, and long term stay capabilities that extended the booking system to support deposits and recurring payment installments. That's a broad range of product surface area, and Emma brought the same level of rigor and focus to all of it.
What made her so effective was the combination of qualities she brought to every project. She came prepared. When she didn't have all the answers, she sought them out, asked the right questions, and collaborated closely with me to find the right approach. She had a strong grasp of the business problems underlying each initiative, not just the features themselves. And she maintained consistent communication with both stakeholders and the technical team, ensuring alignment at every stage.
One thing I want to highlight specifically, because it's less common than it should be: Emma genuinely listened to feedback from the engineering side. Many product managers tend to manage up and delegate down without much dialogue. Emma approached it as a true collaboration. She also brought a background in graphic design to her work, which showed. She produced UI mockups herself, gave real design feedback, and we iterated together on projects in a way that made the end product better every time.
She operated with a strong sense of ownership and didn't require oversight to stay on track. She was a self starter who followed through consistently and delivered results.
Beyond her professional strengths, Emma is simply a good person to work with. She built real relationships across the organization and brought a warmth to the work that made the team better.
Any organization that brings Emma on board is gaining someone who can operate effectively in a fast moving environment and elevate the people around her. I would work with her again without hesitation.
Jeff Britton
Senior Principal Software Engineer
Placemakr
From Jessica Hoffman, Associate Marketing Director
May 15, 2026
To Whom It May Concern:
I've worked closely with Emma over the past several years at Placemakr, where I lead the Brand and Marketing team and she served as Associate Director of Product Management. Over the last two years especially, we partnered heavily on large cross-functional initiatives involving the customer journey, website and booking engine updates, Hilton partnership integration work, and extended stay experience improvements.
Emma is someone who knows how to bring people together and keep things moving. She's thoughtful, solutions-oriented, and really good at balancing customer experience, operational needs, and brand considerations all at once. She thinks holistically and consistently approaches projects with both strategy and execution in mind.
One of the things I appreciated most about working with Emma was her ability to cut through unnecessary complexity and focus on what actually needed to get done. She communicates candidly, builds trust quickly, and works extremely well across teams.
More recently, we worked very closely together on improving the customer journey and making sure guest-facing experiences stayed aligned with our brand voice while also feeling intuitive and thoughtful for the end user. At many points, Emma truly felt like an extension of the Brand and Marketing team because of how seamlessly she collaborated with us.
Emma brings a calm, proactive approach to fast-moving environments, and she's someone I'd gladly work with again.
Best,
Jessica Hoffman
jhoffman@placemakr.com
706-280-9287
From Alicia Barnash, Senior Principal Engineer
As a software engineer at Placemakr, I had the absolute pleasure to work with Emma on a variety of projects. The work we did was always challenging, and required a depth of understanding of multiple systems composed of dense networks of Placemakr team members, third-party vendors, and the many guests who stayed with us.
Emma was our go-to person who understood the thousand-foot view of the system as a whole, while also possessing the ability to delve down into the weeds of specific systems and imagine ways to improve our processes in pursuit of a larger vision for delivering the best possible hospitality experience for our guests. As an engineer, I always appreciate when a product leader can communicate detailed and specific functional requirements as well as talk through all the little technicalities and tradeoffs that each of the many possible paths entails, and then relay that back to stakeholders to coordinate an actionable plan through the wilderness.
What stood out to me was her deep care for the actual experience of everyone involved—not just the guests who stayed with us, but the employees who had to carry out and perform in the roles and execute the operating procedures we designed and implemented.
Her ability to be flexible, adaptive, and creative in solving the many complex problems we encountered in trying to build our company up to its full potential is truly irreplaceable. Above all that, she was a joy to work with and talk to every day. Her words and presence were always a motivating force in my work and a significant boost to the morale of everyone around her.
Alicia Barnash
Senior Principal Engineer
(951) 775-3114
From Alex Pappas, Sr. Director, Product & Technology
It is without reservation that I recommend Emma for any role she chooses to pursue. Having worked alongside her at Placemakr, I witnessed firsthand the rare combination of technical depth, strategic thinking, and personal character that she brings to every team.
Holistic Business Mastery & Strategic Judgment
Emma developed mastery across disciplines rather than operating within any single function — enabling her to make decisions grounded in actual business needs. This holistic view made her the de facto jack-of-all-trades at Placemakr and a trusted voice whenever cross-functional judgment was required.
Fearless Curiosity & Operational Ownership
Emma consistently dove into complex, unfamiliar domains and emerged as the resident expert. She owned access control end-to-end across all properties — learning the underlying tech from scratch and becoming the definitive resource. She repeated this with our TV infrastructure, taking on vendor relationships, technical requirements, and the full guest experience. Deep, self-directed ownership was simply how Emma operated.
UI Excellence & Revenue-driving Product Impact
Emma is a gifted UI designer and product thinker. She partnered with engineering to design and build a complete internal booking engine and guest portal from scratch, then iterated to support longer-stay bookings — work that drove hundreds of thousands of dollars in incremental revenue. Emma doesn't just build things that look good; she builds things that perform.
Third-party Systems & Integrations Authority
Emma was the unambiguous authority on every third-party platform we used and how they connected. She became the single point of contact for questions that would otherwise require multiple people to answer — saving countless hours and closing knowledge gaps that typically go undocumented.
Character, Culture & Work Ethic
Perhaps what stands out most about Emma is the energy she brought to work every single day. She was genuinely loved across the organization — by peers, by leadership, and by anyone who had the chance to collaborate with her. Her attitude was infectious, her work ethic was relentless, and her commitment to data-driven results ensured that her contributions were always measurable and meaningful.
Any organization that brings Emma on board will quickly realize what we already know: she is not just a great employee — she is the kind of person who makes the entire team better. I recommend her with complete confidence and enthusiasm.
Sincerely,
Alex Pappas
Sr. Director, Product & Technology
pappasaj@gmail.com
703.371.9060