Last week, the Business Journal reported that San Antonio-based New Apprenticeship, a digital apprenticeship program focused on tech skills, recently hired Kris Knopf as its first chief revenue officer.
Knopf, who is based in South Carolina, previously held executive marketing positions with AMC Health as well as MR3 Health Inc. and Davis Vision, both of which are located in San Antonio. He also worked for nearly five years at USAA as executive director of the the company's Affinity Program, a marketing and sales plan.
For his role with New Apprenticeship, which recently closed a $2.5 million seed funding round, Knopf said his focus is on the organization's overall revenue efficiencies and growth as well as building out the sales and marketing teams.
The Business Journal recently talked with Knopf about his goals in his new role and the importance of looking at non-traditional paths of education, as the U.S. faces a workforce shortage, particularly within the tech industry.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your new role? I've spent the majority of my career, about 20 to 23 years now, in all things sales, marketing, and business development. My core focus has always been ... building relationships that help companies grow together. I love to get with companies and understand what strategically drives them and then understand what strategically we need to do to drive us to help them. After all, we exist because of our clientele — they're the ones that enable us to think innovatively, to grow and to help fulfill their needs, which at the end of the day, helps so many other people, communities and individuals. I've worked with companies like USAA, TransAmerica Retirement ... a lot of big companies, as well as a startup like MR3 Health Inc. When you tie all that together, every bit of what I've done hasn't been about just having a job — it is about how do I come in and be part of the team and help it grow effectively and efficiently?
What drew you to New Apprenticeship? What brought me to New was knowing there are so many things happening in the world today, pandemic or otherwise; companies that have the need to grow, but aren't quite sure how ... and the business community has focused a lot over the prior years on everybody needing a four year degree, on everybody needing a master's degree or needing seven to 10 years to come into the workforce, and if they do not, they get overlooked. New is changing that by setting a new standard for how we go about looking at the candidates, workforce, and pathways, and really being able to bring people who if they can't, or didn't go to school, or get a higher education past high school, to get opportunities. We've got the pathways to help accelerate their overall career. If we really look at our workforce or talent pipeline differently, we understand that there are so many people that have been overlooked for so long and they just need a chance and that's what we do with our pre-apprentices and then go into a full-time apprenticeship to becoming a fellow.
What are some of the goals that you hope to accomplish in this role within the next six months to a year? The goals include building out the teams effectively ... and that could be through apprentices that New has already put through its programs, and bringing them into the fold of our business within marketing and sales and business development. We need to be ready to scale up, we've got new partnerships and new clients that are knocking on our door, which is wonderful news, but we need to be able to scale quickly for them and efficiently.
Another goal is helping the company grow in our overall number of total apprentices that are placed with all of our employer partners. The real value of what we do at the end of the day ... is we've got apprentices and employers that are reaching back out to us and seeing all of that grow. Now is the time that everybody should be looking internally and saying, I will restructure our digital and tech capabilities ... everything is growing very, very quickly, and in order to be able to compete in the new world of all things tech and digital related, you need to do that.
Now that you all have closed your latest funding round, when do you expect to exceed and meet the next one? We expect to close our next funding round within the next year and the company is already national -- that is a goal of mine to really highlight. We are nationally based and have all the abilities to fulfill the needs of our clients or partners or investors on a national scale. We have people all over the country, in our virtual company, that help support our ability to be in all of those areas where we're needed most. We are working with community colleges, as well as the high schools in select cities right now, which creates the funnel and the capabilities to connect employers in the communities. We've built partnerships and active discussions to build partnerships with the likes of Dell, EBQ, Wunderman, GoDaddy and AWS. All of those connected pieces bring apprenticeship to the forefront.
This interview was shortened and edited for space and clarification.
