Executive Board
Nick Schriver, CLVLT, COLD, is the president, owner and lead designer of Decorating Elves, a premier outdoor lighting and holiday décor company located on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Nick is a graduate of Landscape Architecture from the Ohio State University and has been doing outdoor and holiday lighting design for more than a decade. He has completed some of the most talked about and highly visible projects in the Tampa Bay area… everything from restaurants and clubs to condos and luxury residential homes. The team at Decorating Elves does more than 250 high-end Christmas lighting and holiday décor projects every year. Nick’s many years of experience have made him a qualified holiday lighting expert and AOLP award winner.
Chris Apfelstadt is a husband, father and the owner of Light Up Columbus, located in Central Ohio. He graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in entrepreneurship from the Fisher College of Business and has been involved in holiday lighting for 18 years. Chris has completed his CLVLT certification and is very proud to have been awarded several AOLP design awards. He is obsessed with improving his lighting design skills and looks forward to pushing the landscape lighting to new heights in the future.
Greg Matthews comes from a diverse background including being a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, professional photographer & A/V systems integration business owner. He’s taken his knowledge and love for horticulture and combined it with his past experiences to refocus on outdoor lighting & audio installations & design. Now the owner of Luxury Illumination, he strives to produce some of the best and most unique outdoor lighting installations available. Based out of West Palm Beach with additional locations in Denver and Nashville, Luxury Illumination has worked on projects across the nation. Greg holds a CLVLT and COLD certification with the AOLP and is currently a teaching mentor and graduate of ILLI (the International Landscape Lighting Institute). Luxury Illumination is also acknowledged as one of the few companies to be called a brand Ambassador for the leading outdoor manufacturer Coastal Source.
Ryan Jaso has been heavily involved in the landscape lighting industry since 2005. Initially, Ryan solely focused on low voltage cabling, but after falling in love with the industry as a whole, he expanded his offerings into all faucets of outdoor lighting (and audio). Jaso credits the support of his amazing team members for helping build one of the most innovative and fastest growing distribution firms in the nation.
Kichler Lighting
Tim Ryan is currently the director for the Lighthouse Group and a lead lighting designer for the Lighthouse Design Studio (a specialized lighting design division). His early background is in landscape design and construction. He began integrating lighting into his landscape designs from the very beginning and five years later in 2003, he migrated fully into the outdoor lighting business solely after falling in love with the mood, magic and creative process that the illuminated garden space provides. He has been an executive manager with Lighthouse since 2015 and seeks to collaborate with other industry professionals from the landscape, home integration and architecture community. Tim is passionate about educating the next generation of outdoor lighting designers for the future and preservation of this artform, which is why he is active in most of the industry’s leading education organizations.
Sandy Beach Lighting & Design Company