Chris Knoll

Current

• President at Ovation Productions, Inc.

Past

• Manager of Application Quality at Varolii Corporation
• Manager, Mosaix Support Group at AT&T Wireless
• Project Manager, I.T. Business Systems at Western Wireless

• Team Lead, Implementation Project Mgmt at Mosaix
• Regional I.T. Manager at Amtrak

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Education

• University of Washington

Recommended

5 people have recommended Chris

Connections

84 connections

Industry

Entertainment

Chris Knoll’s Summary

My strongest professional talents revolve around the creation of processes, procedures, tools, and documentation. My favorite challenge is to be placed into an organization or team that is lacking in process, procedure, documentation, and teamwork, and make dramatic improvement within a very short time. I've received multiple awards over my career because of this ability. I am a very strong Project/Program Manager with the ability to keep multiple simultaneous projects on track, and can obtain results without having direct authority over project resources and personnel.

Chris Knoll’s Specialties:

Process, procedure and documentation creation where none exists; fostering extremely positive and collaborative team environments; looking for ways to improve existing processes and make them even more efficient and cost-effective; creation of tools that help the users to do their jobs better, more efficiently, and with reduced redundancy. Highly productive with an ability to multi-task, high energy level, enthusiastic, ability to handle ambuiguity and loose definition.

Chris Knoll’s Experience

• President

  Ovation Productions, Inc.

  (Privately Held; Entertainment industry)

  March 2008 — Present (1 year 9 months)

  Chris has created a new board game, The Tower of Mystery (www.TowerOfMystery.com). The game's graphic design was done by the well-known industry professional Steven Strumpf. The game is being marketed and sold through Ovation Productions, whose primary focus is to bring the board game into the national spotlight.
  
  In addition to the board game sales and marketing, Chris produces celebrity events in the Southern California and Seattle areas, including (hopefully) a celebrity train from Los Angeles to San Diego in early 2010. Chris is a non-exclusive manager for several celebrities including actors from the original Star Trek and Lost In Space television series.
  
  Chris is a Magician Member of the Academy of Magical Arts (the Hollywood Magic Castle), and he teaches magic classes and does private magic tutoring for interested parties in the Seattle and Southern California areas.

• Manager of Application Quality

  Varolii Corporation

  (Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry)

  November 2004 — March 2008 (3 years 5 months)

  Responsible for ensuring production application quality through an extensive 'tuning' process that I created from scratch, successfully implemented, managed, and maintained. New and existing applications were deeply analyzed ('tuned'), in order to improve application performance, and recommended changes. Tuning included ensuring compliance with client business and security requirements, and ensuring that script/telephony modifications occurred. Recommendations were provided to client and internal personnel, with follow-up once changes were implemented, to verify that the changes provided the desired results. I also led an effort to improve the existing Telephony Platform, including modifications to a proprietary telephony algorithm for both landline and wireless phones, and led an end-user team in development of a Next Gen telephony platform in preparation for a corporate telephony migration, ensuring that existing functionality and quality was maintained and enhanced.

• Manager, Mosaix Support Group

  AT&T Wireless

  (Telecommunications industry)

  1999 — 2004 (5 years )

  Created and managed a 24x7x365 internal predictive dialer support team and help desk, cancelling a vendor contract and bringing all installation, upgrade, and support activities in-house, saving AT&T over $1M each year. Team supported 7 call centers located from Hawaii to Florida, with a total agent population of approx. 300, and containing a variety of telephony systems and PBXs. Worked with internal personnel and contractors, troubleshooting, providing upgrades, and performing call center agent training. Implemented and supported a VB scripting application with an Oracle back-end. Provided agent desktop, remote server, network, and telephony/trunking support to the call centers, as related to the connectivity of the Mosaix dialer systems.

• Project Manager, I.T. Business Systems

  Western Wireless

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; WWCA; Telecommunications industry)

  February 1999 — May 1999 (4 months)

  Provided I.T. Project Management for wireless business systems, including applications, RFP and selection of a data warehousing solution, OLAP selection and implementation, CLEC, database/reporting migration, real-time credit card processing, cellular switch transaction batch reporting, and other projects.

• Team Lead, Implementation Project Mgmt

  Mosaix

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; MOSX; Computer Software industry)

  December 1996 — December 1998 (2 years 1 month)

  Implementation Project Management for Mosaix dialers in a wide variety of client environments (analog and digital), agent workstation configuration and testing, dialer/PBX connectivity (including Nortel Meridian, Lucent G3, Aspect, etc.), dialer software configuration (HP-UX and shell scripting) and upgrades, hardware troubleshooting. Promoted to Team Lead in November 1997.

• Regional I.T. Manager

  Amtrak

  (Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Transportation/Trucking/Railroad industry)

  1984 — 1996 (12 years )

  Union positions (ticket clerk, relief station agent, baggage, commissary from 1984 through 1989; exempt (management) position as sole I.T. support (PC, software, telephony, networks) for the western third of the Amtrak system (Rocky Mountains west and BC) from 1992 through 1996.

Chris Knoll’s Education

• University of Washington

  Business Education 1977 — 1978

  Started out after High School going to the UW, but quickly changed to a career because of financial needs that came about as a result of parents' divorce. (Had to move out on my own). Majored in Business Administration for 2 quarters, then transferred to Tacoma Community College for one quarter before moving into the workforce (which ended up being permanent, no degree earned - but MANY years now under my belt of highly successful business and project management!

Additional Information

Chris Knoll’s Groups:

Magician Member of the Hollywood Magic Castle (The Academy of Magical Arts)

•    Game Makers
•    AT&T Wireless Services Alumni
•    Games Industry Professionals
•    Board games and game design

Chris Knoll’s Honors:

Amtrak Presidential Achievement Award Nominee, 1991
Amtrak Presidential Achievement Award Nominee, 1994
AT&T Wireless Circle of Excellence Award Winner, 2000

Chris Knoll’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch