Award-Winning Innovator, Product & Operations Executive, Entrepreneur, Strategist, Leader, Explorer, Listener, Mentor and Coach, Peoria, Illinois USA

Ken is an internationally recognized innovator and product & operations executive who launched Caterpillar’s first hybrid construction machine, regarded as one of the ten most innovative products in the iconic brand’s 90-year history. In addition to receiving a Caterpillar Chairman’s Award for Innovation, Ken is an Edison Award winner and has earned a Platts Global Energy Award and an International Construction Economic Forum Equipment Innovation Award—all Caterpillar firsts. Ken’s contributions to sustainability have been recognized with CALSTART’s coveted “Blue Sky Award,” as the “Top Product of the Year” by Environmental Leader, and by an Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Award. Ken’s product management leadership was honored with a Caterpillar Chairman’s Award for Continuous Improvement, as a five time finalist for the Caterpillar Chairman’s Quality Award, numerous times on the annual Construction Equipment Top 100 New Products list, by Diesel Progress with their “Excellence in Design Award,” and by Better Roads with a “Top 10 Roll-Outs” Award recognizing the best product marketing launches in the construction equipment industry. He and his team were honored to receive a 2015 Chicago Innovation Award and were featured in Forbes, Inc., Crain’s Business, and Fast Company.

In April, 2017, Ken was appointed Chairman of the Board of FIT America Inc., a subsidiary of the FIT Additive Manufacturing Group, to extend FIT’s European success to North America. With over 20 years of experience, FIT is the world’s premiere resource for additive design and manufacturing (ADM) and is arguably the worlds largest 3D printer of metals. FIT begins with a low cost partnership or alliance to quickly assess and immediately leverage a client’s ADM opportunities. Then the relationship deepens, perhaps through a joint venture, to fully integrate ADM into a client’s operations. Finally, FIT divests when the client is ready to take flight. FIT’s proven business model reduces a client’s ADM learning curve by years, perhaps even decades, and leaves them fully capable of reaping ADM’s extraordinary potential.

The majority of Ken’s career focused on serving Caterpillar customers, dealers, employees, and shareholders around the world with assignments in North America, Asia, and Europe. He held positions with diverse areas of responsibility including engineering, marketing, product management, dealer development, and leadership.

Ken was Caterpillar’s first corporate Director of Innovation and an Analytics & Innovation Division Director. He developed and executed Caterpillar’s transformational innovation strategy to create value for customers and for dealers while increasing bottom line results for Caterpillar shareholders. He guided his team to bolster the best capabilities from Caterpillar’s innovative history and to broaden the scale of innovation by introducing a new innovation vocabulary and integrating new tools, leaner processes, and external perspectives. Ken built an innovation incubator to drive a global culture of trust, collaboration, and experimentation while generating revenue through new products and services.

Ken was Global Product Manager for Cat® Large Hydraulic Excavators and an Excavation Division Director. The Product Manager is one of Caterpillar’s eight critical job roles that owns the P&L, ensures customer satisfaction, and develops and executes the product line strategy. Ken led all aspects of this $2.5B+ topline global business from product design and competitive positioning to geographic sales strategies and pricing, from production capacity and order-to-delivery performance to product support and parts. As CEO of the business, Ken guided his team to the best worldwide quality in the product’s 40 year history and restored the product line to profitability and global market share leadership

Ken holds a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois and completed executive development programs at Stanford University in Stanford, California, The Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Bradley University.