Employee Spotlight: Meet Chris Manzeck – Meteorologist and Weather Sales Engineer

What’s your role?

As Solutions Engineer and Meteorologist, I support pre-sales efforts across our global weather sales team, with a focus on supporting sales staff and prospective customers within the Americas and APAC sales territories. I specialize in translating the complicated nature of describing weather and forecasting to business and technical users to ensure their use of weather data from Spire is based on sound science and is technically viable to help them achieve their desired business outcomes.

Describe your journey to Spire.

I spent over three years working in the broadcast meteorology industry in customer support and implementation roles. I then had a three year stint in the Healthcare IT industry before being pulled back into my weather career by IBM and The Weather Company, where I worked for nearly five years as a sales engineer and meteorologist. I made the jump to Spire from IBM primarily because of the innovation I saw happening in weather forecasting here and the desire to join a company that matches my passion for creating innovations in the weather industry.

What interests you most about space? Have you always wanted to work in the space industry?

I think it’s so cool that Spire operates solutions in space that impact the entire Earth. I brag about it all the time to my close friends (most of whom are also meteorologists), and I hope to be able to travel to see one of our launches someday in person. I’ve always been curious about space, and specifically, the most recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope are absolutely mind blowing to me. Those first images had a profound impact on how I see my place in this universe and makes me want to understand even more about the “why” and the “how” questions about our origin.

What Spire value do you relate to the most?

Unbounded.

I have always been of the mindset through my career that the status quo should be continually challenged, and I love how directly relatable that way of thinking is to the core Spire value of being Unbounded. I truly believe that every process can be improved in some way, and that translates to weather forecasting as well as what Spire is trying to achieve. We have to think in an Unbounded way in order to push the science of weather forecasting to the next level.

What keeps you busy outside of work?

In my personal life, I enjoy running and fitness, storm chasing, digital and film photography, and spending quality time with my family. I work remotely from Wisconsin, and I love taking full advantage of all four seasons that the state has to offer.

The global nature of Spire requires flexibility and time management. How do you navigate working with colleagues around the globe?

I’ve learned to put up hard boundaries around my family time during the evenings and to be as flexible as possible around those boundaries. This means sometimes waking up at an awkward time in the morning to jump on a sales call or supporting a client’s need after the kiddos are asleep at night, while still allowing the personal time that I need to feel recharged and satisfied with my career. I also try my best to not check work email and Slack during my “off” time.