Kellen Furness
9Ware Founding Partner. Customer Experience Lead. User Interface Specialist.
Marketing and Operations
Prior to 9Ware, Inc.'s founding, Kellen received a B.S. Commerce degree from the McIntire School at the University of Virginia and subsequently has served myriad roles during her more than 30 years in business. Her experience includes several years managing national market studies and advertising campaigns for IKEA, where juggling marketing plans, site surveys, TV and radio production, newspaper and magazine print ads in a fast-paced environment built her strong foundation in client strategy and customer support.
Recruited in 1989 to serve as Director of Operations for the corporate office of Parcel Plus, a national Pack & Ship franchise start-up, Kellen led the creation of the firm's Operations, Marketing, and Pricing manuals, designed and conducted training programs, scouted and negotiated leases for franchisee sites, and supervised store designs, permitting, and construction.
Technology Management
The Internet came of age during Kellen's tenure at Parcel Plus and she spearheaded the firm's electronic commerce initiatives. Eventually serving as V.P. of Information Technologies, along the way Kellen managed the design, production, training, technical writing, sales, and marketing for auctionship.com, eBay's first Internet-based pack & ship partner.
Kellen left Parcel Plus in 1997 after helping build the company from 16 stores in 1989 to 125 industry-leading stores in 1997, based on average annual retail sales per store. Having managed software projects for years, Kellen's passion for learning led her back to school to learn to do the coding herself.
Technology, Hands On
Working for AT&T, in her first hands-on development job, Kellen supported the firm's Customer Account Data Management team in the collection, integrity, and manipulation of customer billing data migration from the mainframe to the Unix side of the system. Although she continued this work for a while after it was acquired by IBM, Kellen had already met Barry Kamrad and the other founding partners of 9Ware at AT&T.
9Ware was incorporated in 2000 and there's been no turning back!