About

Signed,
Michael + Travis

Aurelia May Studio began with one project.

Michael: “I’m Michael Cathrea. I founded Resonate Music in Edmonton. When I rebuilt the school’s website from scratch, I learned, in the building, what an AI-forward business actually looks like. I launched the studio to make that work available to others.”

Travis: “I’m Travis Grant. Michael and I have known each other for years. I created and led the digital strategy at a national non-profit, with AI integration and adoption at the centre of the work. I’ve spent the last decade-plus building modern infrastructure for organizations that needed to operate beyond their size. I saw the studio site, recognized what he’d built, and called him.”

The conversation became a partnership.

Aurelia May Studio is now a duo agency, 50/50, co-founded by Michael and Travis. Two principals, deep in complementary domains, longtime friends, both committed to the same idea: small teams can operate beyond their headcount through AI integration, if someone hands them the map and builds what it shows.

The partnership

Two principals, two complementary domains, two cabins in approximately the same woods. The duo is the model. Both founders are in the room from intake through delivery on every engagement. No vendor team. No junior account exec. The work belongs to the people who do it.

Most engagements eventually span both lanes. A website build surfaces operational needs. A workplaces integration calls for a public surface that matches the new operating reality. Discovery is where these conversations open up — and the duo is in the room for both.

How we work

Every engagement starts with a conversation. Reach out, we set a 30-minute call, both founders in the room. If we’re a fit, we move to scoped discovery.

Discovery is structured. Websites: a brief and a working session. Workplaces: an Operating System Review, paid and credited against the build. Either way, you end with a written recommendation and a proposal that names what we’ll do, what it costs, and when it ships.

From there the build moves fast. The duo is the same two principals from intake through delivery. There are no handoffs, no junior teams, no surprise specialists.

Michael Cathrea

Co-founder · Websites lane

I’m Michael Cathrea, co-founder of Aurelia May Studio. I founded Resonate Music in Edmonton nearly fifteen years ago. The studio grew out of rebuilding Resonate’s website from the ground up: engineered for AI search, built for top-tier performance, and run on infrastructure I own and operate myself from a cabin in the woods. Once the model worked, offering it to other businesses became the obvious next move.

I build for operators because I am one. The same set of decisions that has kept Resonate running through every economic cycle since 2012 is what I bring to a build: what matters, what does not, where to spend, where to hold back, and how to make the result feel inhabited by the people who run it.

The studio is named for my daughters, Ivy Aurelia and Ada May. Both beautiful, both capable, just as any design should be.

Travis Grant

Co-founder · Workplaces lane · LinkedIn →

I’m Travis Grant. Like Michael, I do most of my work from a cabin in the woods (different cabin, approximately the same woods). I’m a big-picture thinker who has spent nearly 20 years building expertise in project management, web development, information management and technology, digital and email marketing, business intelligence and data analytics, and leading technical teams. Most of my work has been in the non-profit space where timelines are tight, budgets are constrained, and resources are thin. (Sound familiar?) This is the context where I learned to be a self-sufficient one-man marketing and IT team.

For the last four years, I’ve poured my energy (and more than 10,000 hours) into AI, a technology that has helped me scale my work, leading to my partnership in Aurelia May Studio. My goal: help build the right tools that free people from the repetitive and mundane so they can focus on higher value work.

I’m here to bring my experience and knowledge to your project, to help solve problems so you can focus on what’s most important to you: quality assurance and growing your business.