Chris Hermenitt, M.S., Co-founder & COO
Mr. Hermenitt has 25 years of manufacturing experience with Fortune 500 companies in the automotive, aerospace, and medical technology sectors as Vice President of Quality for Asia Pacific, Vice President of Quality for North America, and Vice President of Global Quality. He is a member of the American Society of Quality and the U.S./TAG to ISO/TC 176, the reviewers of ISO 9001, the global standard for quality management, and has been involved in revising the application of the standard globally.
Between 2007 and 2010, Mr. Hermenitt gained an understanding of Japanese culture through an assignment to Japan to work with the world's top automotive manufacturing companies, Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, to establish a quality management system for the German company, MANN+HUMMEL Group, for which he was employed at the time.
From 2011 to 2015, Mr. Hermenitt moved to Shanghai, China, where he built a new Asia Pacific quality management team from Flextronics to Henkel's Asia Pacific headquarters in Shanghai, where as a leader he actively created global development opportunities for Chinese employees. During this period, he was also invited to lecture a graduate class at the East China University of Science and Technology, where he not only taught the application of quality management knowledge in practice, but also pointed out the direction of career development for young students before entering the workplace.
In 2015, to support Dr. Hermenitt's dream of education, they co-founded Blue Torch USA, which aims to help the next generation light the path to their dreams through education. Over the past eight years, Mr. Hermenitt has advised every student on their future direction from a career perspective, participated in every mock interview, shared how American culture is expressed in interviews, and all the scenarios they may encounter in interviews to help students build their confidence and pass the interviews successfully. At the same time, Mr. Hermenitt is also a member of the U.S. application essay review committee of Blue Torch USA. He participates in the routine discussion of essays in an innovative way, and often surprises the students with the idea that "stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one".
Today, Mr. Hermenitt is a Consultant Director at Valor Equity Partners, a leading consulting firm in the U.S., providing quality management solutions to top high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, after having built global quality management systems for two U.S.-based startups. He was also a guest lecturer at the graduate program of Arizona State University.
Mr. Hermenitt has an M.S. in Engineering Management and a Graduate Certificate in Quality Management from Eastern Michigan University and a B.A. in Management and Organizational Development from Spring Arbor University.