Em Gunter

Em Gunter
Current college	Virginia (2021-Present)
HSQB profile	meebles127
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Em Gunter is a student at the University of Virginia and former high school player in Virginia. They were a member of PACE from 2021-2023 and previously served as PACE's Director of Communications.

Career

Em began playing quizbowl during their freshman year of high school, but scaled back involvement as a player in 2020 to dedicate more time to tournament direction and outreach. Em is currently at the University of Virginia, where they help with staffing and logistics.

They also authored the "The Herb Brooks Memorial Packet", a vanity packet centered around the 1980 US Olympic hockey team.

Outreach

While in high school, Em wrote the "Guide to High School Outreach" and the guide to buzzer selection "So You Want to Buy a Buzzer System".

Logistics

In response to the cancellation of the 2020 ICT, Em worked with Will Alston to organize the 2020 Internet Charity Tournament, a Festivus-style weekend of vanity packet readings which raised $4,465.91 in charitable donations for the CDC Foundation. In June 2020 Em spoke at the David Riley Coaches Conference about outreach to under-represented populations and hosting quizbowl tournaments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Em organized both the 2020 and 2021 editions of Festivus, introducing organizational changes like formalized schedules and sign-ups inspired by their earlier work on the Internet Charity Tournament. Donations were gathered for Partners in Health in 2020 and Be The Match in 2021.

Em and Jordan Davidsen served as Assistant Tournament Directors for 2022 ACF Nationals alongside main TD Michael Kearney.

Honors

In 2021, Em won the Benjamin Cooper Young Ambassador Award for their extraordinary commitment to outreach, both on a local level in central Virginia and on a national level by writing articles on outreach and helping tournament directors handle online logistics in the age of COVID-19.

That same year Em was the co-recipient (with Karan Gurazada) of the Robert Grierson Friend of Scholastic Bowl Award given by the IHSSBCA. The award was earned for "making widespread online quizbowl possible by automating crucial steps of the tournament creation process" and "perfecting and documenting a procedure for using CarlBot, a Discord role management system, to generate team and staff assignments". It marked only the third time the award was given to someone who primarily worked outside of Illinois.

Benjamin Cooper Young Ambassador Award
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
Ashish Kumbhardare	2021	TBD

Trivia

Em is notably unrelated to Eric Gunter, a pharmacy student at UNC.