Meet Chris Rista
Chris has been involved with high-technology manufacturing his entire career. In his first 11 years he worked in various manufacturing, engineering, and sales positions for a manufacturer of turbo-expander/compressor systems, which have been installed in petroleum, petrochemical, and natural gas applications all over the world.
From there, Chris spent three years as a Product Manager for Cryogenic Piping and Valve Systems, and another three years in the fluid power industry as a Marketing Manager before moving to Colorado in 1997 to join AFT as a Product Group Sales Manager.
Three years ago Chris became a Senior Sales and Marketing Manager for AFT, and just three months ago he assumed the role of the company's Senior Product Group Sales Manager for Global Automotive Sales – a job Chris loves.
"High technology sales are great for an engineer," said Chris. "It's the perfect mix of engineering and business management. You get to stay involved with your profession while having your hand on the throttle of profit and loss. That can be very satisfying."
Chris' job is to formulate a worldwide sales plan for the automotive components market. As he describes it: "I search for automotive component applications that pose technical challenges that AFT can meet while offering our customers' significant long-term cost savings. I meet with our customers' advanced development personnel and work with their engineering and purchasing groups to develop proposals for applications of AFT's MIM manufactured components. Then I go back and work with AFT's purchasing, engineering, manufacturing and process technology groups to guide our customer's products through the MIM development process and into production."
Chris has been married to his wife Beth for 27 years, and they have three boys, ages 25, 22, and 19. "We are a couple of antique store devotees. I especially enjoy collecting old service station paraphernalia such as porcelain signs, oil cans, maps... just about anything with the cool old graphics that represent oil companies of the 1940's, 30's, 20's and earlier. I also enjoy skiing, sailing, and a good barbeque," said Chris. |
