CHRIS PAYNE, EMBA
OPERATIONS. PEOPLE. PERFORMANCE.Every operating problem I have been handed was a people problem first.
I came up through Human Resources. The work never stayed inside it. I joined a federal contractor as its first HR hire when it had four employees, carried the Chief Operating Officer title alongside Chief Human Resources Officer for six years, and left after the business had passed $80 million in revenue across 13 states.
Scaling Growth
$8M to $72M in roughly 18 months
Workforce Growth
4 to 525+ people, 200 employees and more than 325 contractors
Risk Contained
Zero claims in the three-state wind-down that closed the business
Strategic Operations
200 employees and 325+ contractors
Multi-State Compliance
13 states
Culture Builder
65 of 100 employees with a decade of tenure
Three things a business needs from an executive, and where I have done each.
OPERATE
Thirty-five location regional leadership. Lean and Six Sigma. ISO 9001. Labor relations in a unionized 24/7 airport operation. Operational restructuring across two companies.
SCALE
Four employees to a workforce of 200 plus more than 325 contractors. Eight million dollars of revenue to seventy-two million in roughly 18 months. Multi-state expansion, and the infrastructure and organizational design underneath it.
TRANSFORM
A five-phase reorganization of approximately 700 people. Acquisition diligence. AI governance and automation. A founder leadership team taught to run a distributed company. A business closed across three states without a claim.
The product changes. The operating fundamentals do not. Every business still has revenue, cost, labor, customers, leadership, risk, execution, and growth constraints. My strength is learning the business quickly and identifying which of those levers needs to move.
Where this background fits.
Considering an executive hire?
If you are looking for an executive who can operate across people, process, performance, and growth, I would welcome the conversation.
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