Since March of 2007, Kris has been a contributing innovator at HarQen, a leading web telephony platform provider located in Milwaukee. He loves his work, his team, and their vision.
His present large-scale professional portfolio consists of HarQen projects VoiceScreener and the HarQen platform, where he has been the lead designer and front-end developer. He was the lead developer and designer for ComicWonder, which was an initial proof-of-concept prototype for the HarQen platform. A few more large-scale Web applications are being developed for 2010.
In general, his lead roles are as a user-centric designer, project manager and client-side coder for HarQen, but his normal work week includes supporting many parts of the team. He works tightly with marketing strategy and implementation, sales and client services, Java and PHP, SQL and Postgres databases, advertising and design, business strategy and vision planning.
In his roles he focuses first and foremost on usability. His level of empathy towards those using his products drives him to never quit until the full scope of his work is complete. At a tertiary level he focuses on the real-world implication of everything he touches. Revenue models, market fit, culture influence and technical achievement are some of the standards he measures his work and thoughts.
Before 2007, Kris was active with several small start-ups and many large projects within his academic career, all of which were great primer for the life he leads now. Highlighted projects and responsibilities include lead UI designer and front-end developer at a former marketing start-up firm in Milwaukee (2006), user interface design consultant to Carroll University (2005) and the student representative on the Presidential Search Committee at Carroll University (2005-06).
Kris has been fortunate to be involved with a job that he loves, so most of the person that is Kris can be interchanged with the career that is Kris. Part of modern-day happiness is having love of your labor, not working on your labor of love.
Many forms of inspiration and interests feed his work life, however. Beyond user interface design and client-side scripting, he loves information design (info graphics), international politics, statistical analysis, economics, product design, geography and cartography, The Economist, cynicism and positivity, academia, books less and magazines more, start-up business strategy, Getting Real, the fine arts, Change This and TED, and lastly network and communication theories.
Kris graduated from Carroll University in 2007 with a major in Graphic Communications, and minors in International Relations and Communications. Much of his liberal arts studies were around business, economics, politics as well as technology.
At some point, he does aspire to migrate back to academia and pursue a doctorate in design or Web entrepreneurship. He hopes to one day build a top-notch, nationally recognized program around Web technology, business and design that many great up-and-coming Web students strive to be a part of.
He is getting married soon, and has many interests and hobbies he shares with his fiance.
They share a deep love for soccer, the Brewers, the Packers and farming. The Venn diagram of music interests is pretty similar, although his favorite music is (old) Modest Mouse and hers Animal Collective. Although it can be excessively annoying when people gloat about pets online, he admits that they have a cat whom they love a lot.
Mainly, Kris can be identified as a do-er. He builds, imagines, studies and pursues, and his normal hobbies reflect this: He watches high-quality TV programming (ex: The Wire, Arrested Development) more so than movies although he loves spy thrillers. He runs quite a bit, and is a self-confessed high-fantasy geek (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.). A long time ago in his childhood, he loved LEGOs and building stuff, but his desire to create still exists. A closet PC gamer of old, he's got rusty video gaming skills to pay the virtual bills. Those days have been shelved, though, to facilitate broader hobbies meant to boost his design and innovation skill sets.
Lastly, and most importantly, his blend of extrovertedness and introvertedness allows him to have many types of friends and a lot of family he cares for deeply.