Kris Smeage hails from a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan and holds a bachelor’s degree in international political science from Baldwin Wallace University degree and a master’s in international affairs with a concentration in infrastructure development and advanced quantitative policy analysis from Columbia University. He has also completed further professional studies in business management and leadership at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kris started his career at the Baldwin Wallace University Center for Innovation and Growth, an entrepreneurship-focused think tank and consulting group. As an Associate, he led several client engagements to design and deliver go-to-market strategies for leading brands representing $100M+ in annual revenue streams across consumer health products, financial services, and motion and control technologies manufacturing.
Before joining Adventum, Kris led partnerships and strategic initiatives in his role as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Strategy at Lumina Analytics, an early-stage enterprise SaaS company. In this capacity, he worked closely with the CEO and co-founders to build out the sales and customer success teams and was instrumental in customer development efforts that resulted in the company’s first cohort of enterprise customers.
A global and creative problem solver, Kris has led big data projects on three continents. He has spearheaded research on land markets and refugees in Ghana, tracked illicit financial flows in the Philippines ’ large-scale gold mining industry, and supported the development of a smart train control system for the New York City Subway.
He currently resides in Tampa, FL with his wife and two collies.