I’ve been using technology, marketing, and strategy to build businesses and non-profit organizations for two decades.
It’s been a great ride! And now I’d like to put what I’ve learned (and who I’ve met) to work for you.
Allow Me to Introduce Myself
As you can tell from my LinkedIn profile, I’ve spent much of the last two decades working in, on, and around the internet and the networks that make it up. I’ve helped build a couple of ISPs (internet service providers), as well as many other data center (public and private cloud) and campus (including multi-site regional WAN) networks. Of course, building great networks requires a solid understanding of the applications and data that traverse them, and how to secure all of it.
In addition to building and operating networks and broader IT infrastructure, I’ve spent time working with folks who hold multiple PhDs in an R&D think tank. In fact, I won “Inventor of the Year” while in that role for my prolific idea generation, and now hold 8 patents. After that I spent a couple years flying around the world educating folks about technology, and also about community organization and how the internet economy works. I’ve given public talks in 34 countries, across 5 continents.
I founded my first non-profit organization just a few years after my first for-profit company, back in the early noughts. I have since helped launch numerous operator groups, community conferences, educational committees, and other public benefit organizations. I believe that technology has the power to benefit all of humanity, and that it is our responsibility to ensure it does.
In addition to launching, building, and nurturing those non-profits; I have helped build and grow several businesses. And beyond making the technology work, I’ve helped in many other ways. I’m an accomplished leader, team builder, and coach. I’ve managed product development from ideation through go to market planning and launch. I’m great in a crisis, with excellent troubleshooting, analysis, and synthesis skills. That includes both technology issues, personnel challenges, and business model mistakes. I have orchestrated and executed multiple re-organizations, re-brands, and other strategic pivots.
I’ve held many titles over the years, but my favorite are: Father, friend, husband, brother, and son.
TechBiz & BizTech
In addition to helping technology businesses grow, I also help businesses grow with technology.
Chris is a really hard working person. Very smart technically & could handle issues very promptly. Was very nice working with him.
We hired Chris with high expectations. He quickly proved to be a good choice as he grasped new concepts exceptionally well and showed an aggressive personal learning regimen, surpassing his peers. I would highly recommend Chris in his future endeavors.
Working with Chris has been a real pleasure. He is open, friendly, intelligent, discreet, skilled, productive, driven, resourceful and trustworthy! Our organisation has really benefitted from Chris’s skills and knowledge.
Chris is an excellent worker with a driving pulse for new technology and leading the industry. His work ethic is second-to-none and his teaming with others always ensures fantastic collaboration with positive outcomes. I am confident that Chris will continue to drive new technology evolution in our industry.
One thing everyone should know about Chris, he always provides nothing less then quality customer service and technical support. His professionalism and skill far exceeds all expectations because he always goes the extra mile.
Chris is a superior problem-solver with great people skills and ability to ask the really hard questions. A team player who is engaged and approachable, I expect Chris will have significant impact in the tech industry.
I count my time working with Chris among my most rewarding professional experiences. Chris is someone with a voracious appetite for knowledge and a desire to understand the world around him. While these traits make him an incredible thought partner that excels at introducing new concepts and riffing off the ideas of others…it also makes him a multiplier, someone that helps others sharpen their own thinking by forcing them to be more introspective, to be more curious about what’s possible, and to think critically and objectively about the reality of a situation.
Chris is a tide that raises many boats, not just through his ability to cultivate innovation and promote positive disruption, but by the example he sets. Chris is one of the most accountable people I’ve ever known and consistently demonstrated a knack for bringing order to chaos, prioritizing diffuse – and often conflicting – objectives, and producing positive outcomes in situations where the deck seemed stacked in such a way that that doing so appeared impossible.
Chris was always on top of current technology and how this technology would fit into his current network environment. Chris was a pleasure to work with and will be an asset to any organization lucky enough to hire him.
I have worked with Chris on several projects over the years. His leadership, cooperation, and execution skills are first class. Chris looks at the big picture, identifies necessary actions, builds a plan, and gets the project done
Chris has the talent to completely embrace and encompass a technology and from that drive results. It is obvious that Chris enjoys sharing his knowledge base and ideas with others. It was a pleasure working with Chris.
Chris is objective, strategically insightful, sharp and on top of his game. He’s a great collaborator who is willing to change his approach mid stream or whenever, to accommodate others. He’s a very dedicated professional with strong personal leadership qualities as well as being open and willing to inspire and empower others.
Chris is one of the most brilliant technologists and charismatic speakers I’ve met in a long time. He’s an absolute creative, has a mind focused on solutions, and is driven by a deep belief in what he does. He’s both an inspirational leader and great colleague. I’d work with Chris again any day of the week.
Chris is one of the sharpest minds you will be lucky to come across, whether in a personal or professional setting. His ability to cut through the noise and see the relevant elements and data in any situation is remarkable.
Chris is intensely focused, dedicated, and capable. He absorbs and synthesizes data quickly, finds the leverage points, focuses on what matters, and delivers results. Any high-performing team will get a boost from engaging with Chris.
Chris is highly technical and has excellent organizational and follow up skills. I assigned Chris several initiatives while assigned to my team and his performance was exceptional. He is self motivated and has extensive technical knowledge.
Chris is a focused individual, willing to go the extra mile to help customers, and do the job correctly. He is a great teacher, and a smart man.
Chris is an engineer and leader of the highest caliber as demonstrated by his ongoing volunteer responsibilities within the Internet technical community and his unwavering drive.
Chris Grundemann was among the most energetic and competent members of our Council throughout his time as an elected member. I found(find) Chris a most thoughtful man who brought insight and experience to the role, but was also always a genuine and professional member exerting leadership with tact and good humor. I think highly of Chris both as a technical professional and community leader, but also as a trusted friend.
Chris consistently generates and delivers on new and creative ideas both within the guided bounds of a project or team goal as well as when left unbounded and allowed to explore. In addition Chris is a great team player willing to help whenever asked. Chris is also a competent and organized leader with great communication skills capable of managing projects from inception to completion.
Chris was one of the go-to guys whenever there were complex problems. He has the knowledge, desire and potential to advance in any position he chooses. It was a pleasure working with him.
Chris was an amazing colleague to work with. I admire his ability to understand very technical concepts as well as business and market driven ones. He has amazing stakeholder management skills, and has the ability to build relationships and manage working groups and teams. He is a true leader who is very passionate about whatever he is working on. His desire for framing strategic direction and leading execution would be an asset to any organization. I would welcome any opportunity to work with Chris again.
Together we conquered many challenges, won impossible battles in the vendor industry and created a unique security practice. He has an interesting set of talents of being an engineer, innovator, and a thought leader, but never mixes any of these roles. That is what makes him successful as a leader. “Never be comfortable” is what Chris would tell me, which is what pushed me to do my first tech talk. I now have dozens behind me within some of the largest conferences known in the security vendor industry. Chris is nothing short of supernatural.
Chris is a strong team player with tremendous attention to detail. His approach was always well thought out with solid backing to his ideas. His role and growth in the company were key to its survival. He was also very willing and able to wear multiple hats and was a flexible asset to have on hand.
His intelligence and wit are only outshone by his friendly and helpful nature. Working with Chris is always a pleasure and a smashing success.
Chris is an excellent organizer and leader with vision and energy. He pulled together the Colorado Chapter of the Internet Society, wrote the inital by-laws and saw the process through to the actual chapter formation.
Chris was the driving force behind the creation of the ISOC Colorado chapter. I appreciated his leadership and technical skills and his determination. I enjoyed working with Chris on this project and I am looking forward to doing it again.
Chris is a great asset to any company. His dedication and drive for results makes him a consistent high achiever.
Chris is always happy to contribute to a discussion or to an issue and is more than happy to lend a hand to both assist team members with their tasks or to lend his expertise in order to benefit the requestor. He is constantly providing knowledge transfer in a peer to peer manner, engaging others to work together to move a project forward or to resolve an issue. Most importantly, Chris is an open and honest communicator about whatever the topic of the moment is, something that is refreshing in today’s world. I could always count of Chris to lend his opinion or his ideas to any subject matter, and this becomes an important contribution for any team. Chris has tremendous talent and is a very hard working, team player. I would welcome Chris to my team at any point in the future.
He would always be available as a sounding board for complex issues and provided me with amazing insight on long term planning and ways to scale up teams and business processes.
Chris is very knowledgeable, is always willing to explain and discuss, and is great at pulling together everyone’s input and moving things forward. Working with him has been a great experience.
As Chris’ Editor for Exploring IPv6, a Day One book, he kept to his schedule, output exceedingly lucid prose, and gave a sense of instructional design to an extraordinary tough technology to deploy. On time, better than could be expected, and executed with grace.
In a wireless organization the network your products operate on needs to be reliable, dependable and operating at top efficiency. Chris made sure that was a reality. Chris was a leader in the day to day operation of our network, on initiating improvement designs for the future and helping out the other departments to close performance gaps. There was never a problem to hard to solve, a solution he was not willing to seek out or a cutting edge idea he hadn’t already researched.
I’ve never met anyone who worked as hard as he did at learning and absorbing new skills and technologies and then applying them to his work. He’s a very fast learner and an asset to anyone who has the fortune to work with him.
Chris is technically creative, hard working, and extraordinarily effective at working with both internal and external technical expert communities. A pleasure to have had on the team at CableLabs. I fully expect him to significantly move his organization and the industry.
Chris is a consummate professional. Motivated, expressive, talented in everything he attempts. His skills in making things happen for the better are top notch.