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Our Staff

The people at Top End are an experienced team. Chris Peterson designs products for performance and then tests them himself or through our athletes and people who work in customer service. Paul Schulte is one of the top wheelchair basketball players of all time. Mark Hickey has played quad rugby for over 15 years. Doyle Mann has played every wheelchair sport there is since he was a child. Mary Carol is an Occupational Therapist and teaches other therapists how to prescribe everyday and sports wheelchairs all over the world. Katrina Piparo and Nicole Tikkanen will go the extra mile to help you, no matter what! Our plant supervisors, Floyd and Bob, have built more custom chairs than probably anyone else on earth. Meet all of the Top End employees who make your custom chair a reality.

	Chris Peterson Director cpeterso@invacare.com — x2232 Chris is one of the original founders of Top End and is our principle designer. He is the one who is out there listening to the athletes and discovering ways to make our products faster, better, stronger. Chris is also a competitive handcyclist in the knee-sit division who always finishes in the top three in the USA and top ten internationally. Nothing beats having the designer actually racing the product to make it fast!
	Mary Carol Peterson, OT Marketing & Customer Service Manager mcpeterson@invacare.com — x2222 Mary Carol Peterson is an occupational therapist who specialized in the treatment of rehab patients before she joined Top End in 1992. Her unique background, knowledge of wheelchair sports, classification and disabilities allows her to guide people to the right product and options to maximize each customer's potential.
	Paul Schulte Design Engineer pschulte@invacare.com — x2233 Paul Schulte rocks! Not only is he our design engineer but he is also the captain of the USA National Men's Wheelchair Basketball Team. Paul oversees all of our design changes for production, provides the great exploded drawings you see in our parts books and will, if requested, give you a CAD drawing of your chair before we build it.
	Doyle Mann, ATP Customer Service Specialist dmann@invacare.com — x2230 Doyle grew up loving wheelchair sports and has tried it all from wheelchair racing to basketball to softball and handcycling. Today he is focused on handcycling and playing wheelchair softball and tennis. He has extensive experience with wheelchairs both personally and professionally through his previous dealer work and training as an ATP.
	Katrina Piparo Customer Service Team Leader kpiparo@invacare.com — x2226 Katrina has always worked in customer service and thrives on helping people, especially people who need our products due to their circumstances of dealing with a life changing disease or accident. She loves to research and will do whatever it takes to find the right answer, solution or product for our customers.
	Mark Hickey Customer Service Representative mhickey@invacare.com — x2223 Mark Hickey is our aftermarket parts specialist and he has been with Top End since 1993. Mark has seen our entire product line evolve and knows the history, so if you need a special part, he is the man. He also plays Quad Rugby for the Tampa Generals and has become a product expert on this sport. Nothing like athlete input to make products better!
	Nicole Tikkanen Customer Service Representative ntikkanen@invacare.com — x2228 Nicole has spent her entire career in customer service and, although she is not a wheelchair user, she can relate due to her personal experiences. Nicole is passionate about her work and will do whatever it takes to help customers such as you. She posts our Tweets on Twitter regularly and avidly follows our Team Invacare athletes' activities.
	Floyd Clutter Production Supervisor fclutter@invacare.com — x2229 As the Production Supervisor, Floyd oversees the scheduling of our entire production of custom products and aftermarket parts built here at Top End. His extensive experience and knowledge of factory processes are certainly an asset to our team. Floyd also performs the quality check on each of our products before it ships to be sure that everything matches the order and is perfect.
	Bob McCown Manufacturing Supervisor rmccown@invacare.com — x2225 Bob oversees the manufacturing and fabrication processes in the factory and helps with our quality checks before our products ship out the door. He also lights up a torch and can weld anything you put in front of him from titanium, aluminum or chrome-moly.
	James Rivers Materials Specialist jrivers@invacare.com — x2224 Jim handles all of our purchasing, including custom requests such as anodized Spinergy wheels or special chainrings / gearing for the handcycles. He also prices our custom on-chair options or parts that we manufacture here at our factory.
	Lue-Anna Searles Administrator lsearles@invacare.com — x2227 Lue-Anna's entire working and volunteering career has always been connected to customer service. She enjoys being the behind the scenes person who just gets it done. As the Administrator here at Top End she is responsible for both domestic and international shipping, billing, helping customers set up their Invacare accounts and supporting our customer service department and management staff.