Chris Michael Email & Phone Number

Laramie, Wy, Us

South San Francisco, Ca, Us

As a leader in our People & Culture organization, I drove our strategy for keeping our rapidly growing team informed, aligned, connected, and inspired. My mission was to catalyze connections between people, new ideas, important insights, and a meaningful purpose toward creating an engaged team of teams and a company culture that unlocks (and accelerates!) our success. Originally centered around internal communications, my role evolved to include more project management of the many People & Culture programs, employee onboarding, office management, and even external consumer experience-related communications. I consistently strive to get things done in thoughtful, collaborative, and pragmatic ways that achieve the desired impacts on the business and its people. Some of my proudest accomplishments include reviving our company values, orchestrating increasingly engaging All-Hands meetings, facilitating Working Genius workshops across the company, and standing up a company intranet/EX platform leaned on by over 97% of the organization.

South San Francisco, Ca, Us

Plenty is rewriting the rules of agriculture through its technology platform that can grow clean produce anywhere in the world, year round, with unprecedented yield and peak season quality. Plenty’s proprietary approach preserves the world’s natural resources, makes nutritious produce available to all communities and creates resilience in our food systems against weather, location, pests and climate. Plenty's headquarters are in South San Francisco, and the company operates the largest of its kind indoor plant science research facility in Laramie, Wyoming. Plenty is currently building the world's highest-output, vertical, indoor farm in Compton, California. For more information, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn, or visit www.plenty.ag.

Laramie, Wy, Us

With a mission to educate, equip, and empower small-scale modern farmers, Bright Agrotech was instrumental in fueling the local food economy and creating more meaningful connections to food, domestically and internationally. As Bright Agrotech's first employee, I wore nearly every hat imaginable to start up our humble bootstrap company and grow it from 3 to 40 people from 2012 to 2017, ultimately resulting in a successful acquisition. I partnered closely with the CEO to build our brand through what we called "help-based" marketing efforts where we positioned our company as a guide for aspiring farmers, school teachers, home and hobby growers, etc. so they could achieve their goals of growing food vertically. Once established, I led the company's marketing efforts which included scrappy yet thoughtful content creation, video production, website and graphic design, and more. I also led the development of an online e-learning platform which accelerated the achievement of our customers' goals and monetized our sales pipeline in the process. While leading the marketing work, I also took on more and more leadership of the organization as a whole and worked closely with my Co-founder to build a mission/values-driven organization that attracted and retained highly motivated talent capable of adapting to change. This eventually led to me stepping in as interim CEO through our acquisition. With a focus on farmer enablement and support, Bright Agrotech's goal was to increase access to better food for all people through a distributed network of values-based, economically viable farms. It was a pleasure to be part of this inspiring movement and company.

As a Trainer at CrossFit 7220, I worked with gym members to achieve their health, wellness, and fitness goals by providing functional human movement instruction.

Laramie, Wy, Us

As part of the Bright Agrotech leadership team, we were fortunate to have the business counselors at the WTBC advise us on everything from business and management basics, recruiting support, and sales/marketing strategy development.

With humor, physical positioning, exceptional customer service, I spent nights and weekends providing pedaled power (bicycle taxi) transportation services to those in the Kansas City area.

Washington, Dc, Us

In 2011, I rented a rat-inhabited second story, Acehenese appartment. Aceh, a coastal community on the northern shores of Sumatra, was the city closest to the epicenter of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. My grant partner and I teamed up with Extreme Ice Survey founder, James Balog, to document post-tsunami life in Indonesia. Using comparison photography and listening closely to villagers, city officials and NGO directors, the team uncovered many remarkable findings including: 1) Dozens of comparative photographs depicting the stark contrast from three weeks after the tsunami to seven years later; 2) Over 200 gigs of interviews, still photos and complementary video documenting the intense rebuilding; 3) A visceral understanding that genuine societal resilience comes at a price both emotionally and monetarily, and that true restoration is nothing short of incredible.

For two years, I instructed novice and advanced divers, ages 6-18 towards better self-confidence and a mastery of the sport. By creating a fun, yet goal-oriented atmosphere, I successfully taught essential diving techniques into a team of over 40 athletes.

Laramie, Wy, Us

I engaged with the UW Campus Sustainability Committee to collect and process energy use data from various departments across campus in order to track the UW's progress toward carbon neutrality. This annual survey satisfies the Presidents Climate Commitment and requires constructing a final findings report, Microsoft Excel calculations, and communication with staff to uncover the most up-to-date data.

Bachelor Of Science (Bs) Cum Laude, Political Science/Environment & Natural Resources

College Preparatory Diploma