For well over twenty years, Lori Aune has been the steady and calm voice of AGS who patiently explained demographic terminology, answered questions about the interpretation of data and quickly and efficiently delivered custom data requests to clients. Since everything we do at AGS is tailored to the client needs, almost every file which was delivered came from Lori. If you’ve ever called our 877 number, you likely spoke to Lori, and if you fired off an email, her response was always thoughtful and thorough.

Lori is one of the kindest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, both as a trusted advisor and as a dear friend and family member. It is for us a bittersweet time as we announce that Lori will be retiring at the end of the year.

AGS is a small and tight knit family and what clients saw was only part of the story. Lori has often been the counterbalance who ensured that the easily overlooked details were attended to, efficiently and often quietly. Many of the critical tasks that rest of us thought just magically happened were quietly planned and managed.

The challenges of the twice-yearly data release, each one with more data than the previous, were met with a systematic review of the data, the variable lists, and the delivery files for well over a hundred channel partners. The many channel partners who received data on demand have come to rely on Lori to convert their usually vague requests, needed immediately of course, into data files. All this while dealing with the never-ending stream of questions about the meaning and use of thousands of variables in our library and the nuances and quirks of small area geographic data.

We will miss her decades of knowledge and experience, but more than that, the calm and kind way she approached the daily litany of problems.

Over the course of the next few months, we hope that you will all take the opportunity to thank Lori for her years of dedication to AGS, our channel partners, and our end users, and to join us in wishing her well as she prepares for what we know will be an exciting next phase of life.

Thank you, Lori, for your many years of dedication to our clients and end users. While we will miss your steady professional approach, we will celebrate your achievements as you transition to a life we hope is filled with the joy of family, friends, and travel.