The joys of Photoshop!
Spend enough money on software and classes, and you can do some amazing things with photos. Sharpen them a little to remove some of the blur, then adjust color levels, brightness, and contrast, crop them and reduce size, then cover up the blue shirt guy in the background that ain't really a part of the picture with more background to make it all look purty... and, you'd amazed how much better they look when you make them tiny.
Then you throw in a high contrast 2 pixel border to frame it out and make it jump off the page, then toss in a high contrast name strategically placed and sized, and the image will usually take on a whole new look and feel as an avatar.
And, that all took maybe 4 - 5 minutes!
You're welcome Jenny!! Glad you liked it.