Chris Pachinger

Chris Pachinger(opens in new window), who graduated with a BA in Economics in 2001, is director of business development at CircleUp, an investment platform for consumer and retail VC and private equity, based in San Francisco, California.  After graduation Chris accepted a position as district manager for ADP(opens in new window), a firm that provides payroll services.  Two years later in 2004 Chris moved on to PeopleSoft, a firm that provided human resource and financial management systems.  After a year with PeopleSoft, Chris accepted a position as account executive for Fisher Investments, and 2 years later they promoted him to account executive group manager.  Fisher further promoted him to be their institutional portfolio analytics team leader, co-chief of staff and in 2012 to group vice president.    A year later Chris joined CircleUp where he is currently working.

“Economics provides you with a framework to understand how decisions are made, how processes evolve and why organizations behave in the way they do, “Chris stated in a recent email. “Regardless of your career path - sales, marketing, finance, management, something else entirely - economics forces you into a pattern of critical thinking that helps you understand and leverage the motives and forces influencing the world around you. Almost any field can be learned once you've started your career but economic thinking stays with you all along the way.”  (Last Updated 10/3/17)