Chris Owens - Senior Network Engineer
From a dress code perspective, CRI is a pretty relaxed place. But when he’s in our office and not out in the field, you might see a tall, sharply-dressed man working away at his desk dressed in a white button down dress shirt and suspenders. You could say he’s the Larry King of CRI !
Chris Owens, born in Boston, raised in Washington, DC, has brought his brand of snazziness to CRI as one of our Senior Network Engineers.
Nearly two years ago, Chris came to Idaho with his wife, Tammy, and their three boys to care for his ill mother-in-law. He had never been to Boise. Chris felt like he was taking a “huge leap of faith.” He asked himself, “What am I going to do in Boise?”
His trepidation came from his background. Chris had spent the last eight years working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, a lesser-know sister agency to the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA). For the DIA, Chris ran forensics and worked to secure the DOD networks. Intelligence work is in his blood. Chris was raised by his grandparents, and his grandfather was a Director of the Navy’s Submarine Warfare Operations Research Department (SWORD).
When Chris moved to Idaho, he had heard about CRI and stayed in touch with Gabe Halleus. Chris had experience with Microsoft Active Directory, and was hired to work on the Gallatin County, Montana migration to Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003. He was subsequently assigned to the Bureau of Reclamation as a consultant providing leadership in the enterprise server migration from Novell NDS to Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange 2007 of six regional BOR sites across 17 different states affecting 7,000 users. This project has led him to work at several locations including Grand Coulee Dam , Yakima, Portland, Bend, Denver and Washington, DC. Chris has had to work hard to overcome a resistance to change in the agency that manages water in the West.
As he travels to each site, Chris has said that you have to understand the unique culture of each site, even though their all were under the BOR umbrella. Each location has its own attributes, and often he was looked at as the outsider bringing in change.
As he works for CRI, Chris is also a student at Boise State University seeking a degree in Political Science. Growing up in our nation’s capital and in the heart of politics seems to have had a huge impact. In fact, Chris says he’d like to be Mayor someday! But before that happens, he plans to go back to Law School and focus on technology compliance law as it relates to Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and other similar issues companies face. He certainly has seen a lot of that in the IT world.
When he’s home, Chris likes to get away from techie work and work with a wood lathe as a woodturner creating fine handcrafted wood pens. That’s of course when he’s not chasing his three boys around the house, age 2, 3, and 7. Chris Owens, a lucky find for CRI.