Chris Grams Email & Phone Number

Phoenix, Az, Us

Boston, Ma, Us

Boston, Ma, Us

Making open source software work better—for everyone.

Raleigh, North Carolina, Us

Partner & President at a tech-focused branding and marketing agency working with both large companies and high-growth startups. My job included day-to-day operations of managing a growing firm, including sales and lead generation, financial operations, client management, human resources, and strategy/planning.We've developed branding and marketing strategies for large technology clients like IBM, Lenovo, Avid, Red Hat, and Software AG and for high-growth tech startups like Ansible, NGINX, Blockstream, Mesosphere, Anchore, and Continuum Analytics.We work with clients on a wide variety of marketing initiatives, including lead generation campaigns, brand strategy and positioning, naming, inbound marketing, SEO/SEM, employee value proposition, sales enablement, executive communications, and internal communications and culture.

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is an open innovation project led by management guru and bestselling author Gary Hamel, aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while "modern" management is one of humankind's most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.In my role as Community Guide, I helped design and implement activities to grow the size and passion of the MIX community. This included helping run a series of management hackathons bringing together innovators from all around the world to solve some of our toughest management challenges.

I am the author of book on community-based brand strategy and positioning development published by QUE/Pearson in 2011 and based on experiences at Red Hat.The Ad-Free Brand integrates classic brand positioning concepts with 21st century digital strategies, tools, and practices while highlighting new ways to collaboratively uncover, communicate, and evolve the ideal brand position, embed it in organizational culture, and work with a brand community to bring it to life.It debuted at #3 on Amazon’s list of Hot New Releases in Marketing in September 2011 and spent several weeks on the Amazon marketing bestseller list. Alina Wheeler, noted brand expert and bestselling author of Designing Brand Identity, called The Ad-Free Brand “the most comprehensive and thoughtful guide to positioning that I have ever read.” She's very sweet.

Raleigh, Nc, Us

At Red Hat, I led brand strategy and a marcom team / internal creative agency over a decade as company grew from pre-IPO startup to $1B in annual revenues and 3000 employees in over 50 countries.At Red Hat, we developed a unique, community-based approach to building the brand, using the company’s open source software development model as inspiration. We outflanked some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Microsoft, Sun, and Oracle, to become a leader in enterprise IT, while working with a fraction of the marketing budget.The Brand Communications & Design team included about 30 creative professionals, including designers, writers, digital media specialists, community relations managers, project managers, and account managers. Our team helped design and produce lead generation campaigns, marketing materials, web and digital marketing tools, sales tools, videos, internal communications, events, and executive communications.In my role, I also guided brand strategy, positioning, and naming activities for new products and services and made recommendations for how to integrate new brands as the company made acquisitions. I led the establishment of brand research as a formal practice in the company, including development of an annual brand tracking study.I also played a key role in developing the Red Hat brand and culture around the world as company expanded. I worked with marketing teams in Asia, Australia, South America, and Europe to ensure brand consistency. I travelled worldwide to visit employees, customers, and community members and deeply instill the brand and culture.Before I left, I worked with the EVP of Human Resources to create a new department called People & Brand. We brought together traditional HR roles and the brand team into one group building the brand from the inside out by incorporating brand strategy into hiring, orientation, recruiting, talent development, and other traditional HR roles.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Served in several marketing communications and editorial roles for the consumer division of IBM.

Editor in charge of acquiring new titles for computer book publisher. Managed relationships with authors, negotiated contracts with authors, led team assigned to each title, developed proposals, recruited new authors, etc.

Worked as an assistant to Washington D.C. literary agent Raphael Sagalyn, who represented bestselling authors like David Maraniss, Tom Bodett, Nathan McCall, Robert Putnam, Bill Strauss, Bob Rotella, and Don Peppers. Pitched books to editors, negotiated subsidiary rights agreements, managed author relationships, evaluated manuscripts, etc. Also helped package two books, The Great American Web Book and Uncle Sam's Guide to the Great Outdoors.