Humans of Prodigal: Chris Albro

Prodigal keeps growing, and we're so happy to welcome Chris Albro to the team as our new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

As CRO, Chris is responsible for two main things - growing and retaining Prodigal's revenue, but also what he describes as more important: spending time with customers and getting to understand their businesses, what they need to help solve problems and challenges that they have, and making sure that Prodigal is doing everything possible to help.

Born in California and raised in Idaho, Chris has also lived in North Carolina (he's a proud UNC grad - Go Heels!), Texas, Washington, DC, Montana, and Australia.

His career spans over 20 years in the technology world specifically in the software as a service area. He's led various go-to-market functions, ranging from to professional services to customer success, across companies from zero dollars in revenue all the way up to the Oracles of the world with tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

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Where do you live?

Churchill, Montana. It's a small potato-farming community near Bozeman. There's three businesses in my town. There's a bank, there's a Chevy dealership, and there's a tractor dealership.

Why Prodigal?

The intersection of the market with an emerging technology, specifically artificial intelligence, that will allow us to finally solve massive problems based on a real current data and the specialization that's required to solve problems in the consumer finance space is really appealing to me.

Another layer or two deeper is the team of people that I engaged with throughout that process of Prodigal evaluating me for a fit and me evaluating Prodigal. The people both inside the company as well as the people surrounding the company - investors, board members, etc. - were just top notch across the board.

That combination: a really interesting problem set with great technology and a great team was enough to seal the deal.

When I'm not working, you can find me...

With my family and dogs is probably the honest answer, or at least the version that accounts for 90% of my free time. I have two boys and four dogs and my wife and I spend almost all of our time and attention trying to just be with them and be a good family unit, be supportive and help everybody do what they're trying to do. On most days, it's just getting the laundry done and the trash out and getting the kids to school and making sure are all of the dogs accounted for, etc.

But the other 10% is being outside. I grew up mostly in the mountains of Idaho. I feel at home in the mountains.

What would your co-workers be surprised to know about you?

I'm an introvert. A lot of people are surprised by that, based on my career choice because I love interacting with people at work, and so nobody picks up on the fact that I'm an introvert. But I am, and like all good introverts, I need time to recharge, and for me spending time in the outdoors, in the mountains is where I recharge.

What's your favorite Prodigal value?

Can I pick two? The first of my two favorites is We Pursue Excellence.

If you wake up every morning having slept well, focused on what you need to do, and with a smile on your face, and you do it with a hundred percent of your focus and energy. You're ahead of 95% of people.

What really gets me excited about work is, "Okay, so getting ahead of 95% isn't that hard. How do I get ahead of the other five percent? How do I really unlock excellence?"

Coaching is a huge passion of mine, and helping people unlock that that next level is what gets me up in the morning. I love working with people that are trying to do better than that base. I want to be around people that want to get ahead of the remaining five percent not for the sake of being ahead, but for the sake of being the best that each of us can be.

My second favorite Prodigal value is We Are Specific.

Being specific about what we're communicating, whether it's written or verbal, whether it's a sales conversation or an internal engineering conversation or a customer conversation doesn't matter. Being specific with our intent in our words and our actions is important not only for ourselves, but for our co-workers and our customers. Everybody benefits from just a little bit of attention to detail and specificity.

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