Stefan Labash

Chris Labash teaches communications and innovation for the Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. He has also taught courses in strategy and in entrepreneurship and regularly serves as faculty advisor for student capstone projects in the MISM program.

Prior to joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 2003, Chris’ long career spanned advertising, branding, and marketing, for such leading technology, financial services, packaged goods, and retail companies as Cisco, Cognos, Digital Equipment Corporation, Harris Semiconductor, Hanes Hosiery, Heinz USA, Mellon Financial, Nabisco Lifesavers, Nationwide Insurance, PNC Bank, Rockwell International, Victoria’s Secret, Westinghouse, and many others.

Chris has been Executive Vice President, Executive Creative Director at Ketchum Advertising, Vice President of Global Marketing at Development Dimensions International, a management consultant, a serial entrepreneur, and an admitted startup groupie, working with such venture capital firms as Adams Capital, Draper Triangle Ventures, and Meakem Becker Venture Capital, and with founders and management teams at FreeMarkets (now part of Ariba), Blue Hammock, SEEC, CombineNet, and many other companies.

In addition to his full-time teaching and research at Carnegie Mellon, Chris serves on the Board of Advisors of TechBridgeWorld, a global nonprofit organization started at Carnegie Mellon, and on the Board of Directors’ Marketing Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He also teaches Executive Education classes for senior technologists through Carnegie Mellon’s CIO Institute.

In 2006 Chris co-founded, with Carnegie Mellon colleague Ed Barr, Linchpin Learning, a communications training consultancy that uses graduate coursework as the foundation for executive education. Over 1,000 executives have gone through one or more of the Linchpin classroom, online or Second Life courses since the company’s launch.