Chris Kershner

Chris is a native New Mexican. He was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His father worked at Los Alamos National Labs as a Physicist. His great grandfather was the US Marshal in Red River and his great, great grandfather owned the gambling rights in Raton, Cimarron, and Red River when gambling was legal in the state.

 

Chris worked at Val Verde Ski Basin, Angle Fire Ski Basin and Taos Ski Basin as a ski instructor in the winter and Philmont Scout Ranch teaching rock climbing and rafting in the summers.

 

When Chris got his honorable discharge from the army, he moved to Albuquerque and attended College and received a degree in electronics engineering. During his last year of college, he worked at GTE Lenkurt on 'pulse code modulation' boards for phone systems. When he graduated, he moved to Gulton Industries where he worked on TRW satellite electronics, the trident missile system and Penetran – a tracking system for waste treatment monitoring.

 

Chris moved from Gulton to Pertec (via a slight moment with MITS) and worked on the MITS Altair (the first PC) and Pertec’s PCC-2000. He was trained on repairing 8 inch floppy drive units. He modified the process so that the maximum repaired drives per day for a technician went from 8 to 200 drives. He wrote some of the first CP/M drivers (Control Program for Microcomputers – before MSDos existed)

​

Chris and two partners, Stan Sandoval and Dan Garcia, started Advanced Data International and hired programmers to create the first PC based Point of Sale system. The system was installed all around America and Canada and worked on multiple computer platforms.

 

From there, Chris’s life got a lot busier. He started consulting on computer system installations, starting new businesses helping businesses manage projects. Below are some of the projects.

• University of New Mexico – Installed the first microcomputer network (Novell on ‘Compuadd’ computers)

• Albuquerque Federal Savings and Loan – Installed the first microcomputer network (Televideo Turbodos)

• Aura Communications – half owner – Custom printing and warehousing.

  • Printed all of Albuquerque Federal’s envelopes and did custom work for many other companies.

  • Ran vertical camera and compugraphic typesetter.

  • Performed paste-up and layout for printed materials.

• East Mountain Printing – wrote custom interface from ‘Magic Wand’ word processor to a compugraphic typesetter – the first ‘what you see is what you get’ interface

• Bureau of Indian Affairs – wrote one of the first spreadsheet programs on an Ohio Scientific computer system

• Advanced Data International – Co-founder – first POS on Microcomputers Company – started in CP/M then added MSDos when it was first introduced.

• Key West Florida – Margaritaville with Jimmy Buffet – installed first POS system

• Computer Superstores – partnered with Tony Hamilton and Rick Saylor – first computer chain in the country

• Intel Corporation – Troubleshot software issues in the US and Ireland, then worked on processes to retool plants around the world.

• Network Associates, Inc. – CEO. Created, ran then sold to 8a Group.

• East Heights Moose Lodge – Governor, Administrator

• Radiology Associates – When the A/R at Radiology Associates expanded exponentially, Chris co-managed the company for just over a year. During that period, he rewrote processes and procedures, repriced services, negotiated in-network insurance contracts and achieved recovering the A/R levels to industry standards.

• Sugart Corporation – Assisted in developing MMFM (Modified Modified Flux Modulation) method of writing to floppy disks

• Pennsylvania Station Lounge – Assisted in management, wrote custom software for cash handling

• Checker Airport Express – Cofounder. Managed programming with Rockwell on GPS technology.

• La Vida Llena Retirement Community – Chairman of the Board. When La Vida Llena filed for bankruptcy with a 52-million-dollar debt, Chris took over as CEO. He stayed in that position for 15 years and managed to recover the community from bankruptcy. The community now has expanded into Colorado and Oklahoma and built two new communities in New Mexico.

• Chris worked as the ‘owner representative’ with Haverland Carter and Bradbury Stamm to build ‘The Neighborhood’ in Rio Rancho New Mexico.

• Trilinear Corporation - COO Designed and managed software development and hardware GPS implementation partnered with AON.

• Professional Project Managers – CEO

• Chapter One Riders – President – Veterans Motorcycle Group

• Sunwest Bank – Assisted in setup of Sunwest Credit Services – attended banking school in Orlando.

• Friends of New Mexico Fisher House - board member

• American Legion Post 49 – Historian, Finance Officer

• Chairman of the board for First Things Classical Charter School - Scheduled to open in 2025

• Active member of Rotary Club of Albuquerque

• Board member of Los Poblanos Neighborhood Association

• Citizen Advisor to Disciplinary Board of the NM Supreme Court

​

The above list just touches on some of the projects and positions Chris has performed/held.