How to Avoid Using the Wrong Gender (or age)

So you're given contact info for someone important, an employer, a potential business partner, and the name is one of those names that is not gender specific, like Riley:

Sometimes a name is just not helpful.  How do you contact them?

You could just work around it:

To whom it may concern,
(but that's just unprofessional)

Dear Riley Smith,
(okay that kind of works)

What if you just have to use a gender-specific pronoun?  You can always gauge your probability?  What about Stanley?  You'd think it was a male name, but you never know, so search Stanley on a baby names history website:

There we go!  Now you know you won't call a Ms., Mr. or vice versa.  And you know they're most likely over 40.

Graphs courtesy of The Baby Name Wizard.