Kx Advisors Spotlight: Chris Zaino
Kx Advisors Spotlight: Chris Zaino
Chris Zaino is a Senior Associate Consultant at Kx Advisors. Get to know him and his Kx journey so far!
What do you enjoy most about working at Kx?
The biggest draw to the job for me is how dynamic my work is and how I am constantly learning. As someone with a science background, I love having a finger on the pulse of new technologies and how they can fit into the world of healthcare. Similarly, I love that I have needed to develop my eye for business which I never did in school. Beyond the dynamic, rewarding, and challenging work, the people I work with accompanied by the collaborative, friendly culture Kx has established puts the cherry on top.
What has been your favorite project so far?
My favorite project up to this point was the least scientific-focused project I’ve worked on. I helped a company develop its salesforce deployment plan including how many sales reps they needed to hire and where they should all be placed in the US. The project started off quite daunting as I needed to refine a scoring model for every single zip code in the US. Throughout the process, I was given the freedom and trust to try a new approach for the scoring and ended up developing a web scraper which I had never done before. It was extremely rewarding to not only be trusted with a new approach but to have learned something new and successfully implement it. I also had the opportunity to travel for the first time to a client workshop and spent a day in Nashville which was a very cool experience.
How does Kx fit into your vision of your lifelong career?
I have always bounced between many different interests with a wide variety of topics, and so I’ve never wanted to close any doors of opportunities. Kx allows me to scratch my itch for dynamic work while offering me a clear, supported path I can follow to rapidly develop my career. At the same time, I gain incredible experience and visibility across a huge breadth of healthcare which offers me an optimal launchpad toward wherever I may want to go in the future.
Moving forward, I plan to continue to follow the path Kx has laid out for me as I grow personally and professionally. As I progress, I am extremely grateful I am both supported and able to leverage my time here to explore other career paths, if I wish.
How did you come to join Kx?
I studied Nanomedicine Engineering at the University of Virginia and had long thought I was on my way to Medical School. That changed when I got involved in the entrepreneurship and startup world in Charlottesville. I spent a couple of years working on entrepreneurial projects, ranging from building biodegradable CO2 gas sensors from homemade carbon nanotubes to studying nanoparticle delivery of chemotherapeutics.
In the summer of my third year, I helped support a startup preparing for investor pitches, which eventually turned into a consulting internship consisting of me and the two co-founders. This was my first time doing consultant-esque work, and I immediately felt drawn to it. As is the nature of startups, I needed to pivot in August following my college graduation, which led me to send out applications across many different jobs. The primary opportunities I explored ended up being clinical engineering in Boston, developing biomaterials from sheep wool in New Zealand, and working within healthcare consulting at Kx. In the end, I am very glad and fortunate to have landed at Kx.
Outside of work, what do you do for fun/ how do you spend your free time?
Outside of work, I have a mix of hobbies that I like to balance. Nearly every day for the past year and a half, I have been learning guitar and that has become my main source of relaxation. I also tend to seek experiences beyond the comfort of my apartment including playing ultimate frisbee with a club team in DC, hiking, riding my moped through Rock Creek Park, traveling, and snowboarding.
Most recently, I spent some time in Salt Lake City where I was able to snowboard out West for the second time in my life and get a small sample of backcountry skiing. I would love to get the opportunity to gain more experience exploring mountains outside the confines of ski lifts, so I’m looking forward to what the future holds!
Interested in Healthcare Management Consulting?
Have questions about our work or careers at Kx? Get in touch at info@kxadvisors.com.