Chris Kasulke is a seasoned operations, supply chain, procurement, public safety, and risk-management professional whose career spans approximately four decades. Her professional journey is distinguished by an unusually broad combination of commercial operations, international supply chain management, purchasing, logistics, governance, security, emergency response, and community service. Across each chapter of her career, Chris has developed a reputation for approaching complex situations practically, communicating effectively with diverse stakeholders, and remaining composed when circumstances require sound judgment and decisive action. Today, she brings this multidisciplinary perspective to her interest in board and advisory service, where she seeks to help organizations benefit from the knowledge, perspective, and experience she has accumulated throughout her career.
Chris built a significant portion of her career in purchasing, procurement, logistics, inventory, and supply chain management. Beginning with purchasing and buyer responsibilities and progressing into purchasing management, supply-and-demand coordination, customs administration, and supply chain leadership, she developed an extensive understanding of how organizations obtain resources, manage suppliers, control inventory, anticipate demand, and keep operations moving. Her work has included sourcing products and materials internationally, negotiating contracts and pricing, issuing and managing purchase orders, evaluating suppliers, managing inventory requirements, preparing customs documentation, coordinating transportation, and supporting production environments. This experience has given her a practical appreciation for the interconnected nature of operations and the importance of disciplined execution.
Her international supply chain experience further broadened that perspective. Chris has sourced products and materials from markets including Canada, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, China, India, and Pakistan, while also working with international suppliers, customers, logistics providers, customs brokers, and other business partners. At Canadian Saddlery, for example, she purchased internationally sourced products, negotiated and maintained contracts, attended trade shows in the United States and Germany, and worked with vendors on new product development. Later roles expanded her exposure to forecasting, demand planning, ERP and MRP environments, vendor performance, procurement strategy, logistics, import and export processes, and continuous improvement.
A particularly significant chapter of Chris’s career came with Dejero, where she spent more than seven years progressing through purchasing, logistics, and supply chain responsibilities. Her work encompassed managing an international supply chain, coordinating procurement of standard, semi-custom, and custom components, developing vendor forecasts, managing purchase-order reporting, negotiating with suppliers and logistics providers, and addressing quality and delivery issues. She collaborated closely with finance, production, operations, quality control, research and development, suppliers, freight forwarders, couriers, and customs brokers. The breadth of these responsibilities strengthened her ability to understand an organization across functional boundaries rather than viewing operational challenges in isolation.
Chris also brings direct governance experience through nearly five years of service as a Director and President of Waterloo North Condominium Corporation. In that capacity, she worked alongside fellow directors and property management on financial, operational, infrastructure, and community matters. Her responsibilities included reviewing monthly financial reports and annual budgets, preparing requests for quotation, overseeing maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, coordinating contractors, responding to owners and tenants, participating in annual general meetings, and helping communicate important developments throughout the community. The experience provided Chris with firsthand exposure to the responsibilities of governance: balancing competing priorities, overseeing resources, asking practical questions, maintaining stakeholder confidence, and making decisions with consequences extending beyond any single individual.
More recently, Chris has expanded her professional contribution into municipal enforcement, healthcare security, and emergency services. As a Municipal Bylaw Enforcement Officer, she investigates complaints, responds to public inquiries, educates residents about municipal requirements, uses mediation and dispute-resolution techniques to encourage compliance, and takes enforcement action when necessary. This work requires an ability to interpret requirements while simultaneously managing human dynamics—recognizing that successful outcomes frequently depend on communication, fairness, situational awareness, and the ability to reduce conflict before it escalates.
Her work in hospital security adds another dimension to her leadership profile. In a healthcare environment, Chris has been responsible for building and grounds security, CCTV and alarm monitoring, responses to suspicious activity, assistance with high-risk or aggressive patients, mental-health apprehensions, violent-person incidents, emergency scenes, evacuations, lockdowns, panic alarms, and emotionally charged confrontations. These responsibilities demand composure, discretion, documentation, empathy, and an ability to make appropriate decisions under pressure. Her associated expertise includes building security, physical intervention techniques, mental-health crisis response, conflict management, de-escalation, first aid, patrol, security operations, and situational awareness.
Chris’s commitment to service is also reflected in her role as a volunteer firefighter with the McKellar Fire Department. Her responsibilities encompass fire and rescue response, hazardous-material incidents, medical emergencies, first responder activities, first aid, emergency equipment, and ongoing training. This work complements her professional experience by reinforcing preparedness, teamwork, accountability, and disciplined decision-making when conditions are uncertain or rapidly changing. Her emergency-response background also includes training as an Emergency Medical Care Attendant, creating an additional foundation for understanding safety, human vulnerability, and the importance of responding effectively when others depend on calm and capable action.
Underlying these operational and safety-oriented responsibilities is a substantial educational foundation in supply chain management, purchasing, procurement, contract management, and negotiation. Chris pursued studies in Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Materials, and Supply Chain Management at Seneca Polytechnic, achieving a reported 4.0 GPA in her Supply Chain Management studies. Her earlier professional education through the Purchasing Management Association of Canada included supplier-performance measurement, contract and agency law, principles of buying, and negotiation planning. Together with her emergency medical education and professional credentials, these experiences demonstrate a career-long willingness to develop knowledge across disciplines rather than remaining confined to a single professional specialty.
Chris’s leadership philosophy is equally visible outside conventional employment. Her volunteer experiences have included serving as a youth football team manager and social convenor, contributing as a co-editor to a research presentation, administering a large online discussion community, and maintaining a longstanding commitment as a blood donor. These activities reflect an individual who values participation, service, constructive dialogue, organization, and responsibility to the broader community. Fluent in both English and German, Chris also brings an ability to connect across linguistic and cultural contexts.
As Chris looks toward board and advisory opportunities, she does so with the benefit of experience gained from multiple perspectives: employee, manager, purchaser, negotiator, supply chain professional, salesperson, administrator, board president, municipal enforcement officer, security professional, emergency responder, and volunteer. She is open to opportunities across industries and organizational sizes rather than restricting herself to a particular vertical. Her potential contribution to a board lies in the intersection of operational knowledge and human judgment—understanding processes and supply chains while also recognizing risk, stakeholder concerns, governance responsibilities, and the realities of implementing decisions.
At this stage of her career, Chris is motivated by the opportunity to put accumulated experience to productive use. Board service represents an avenue through which she can contribute practical knowledge developed over decades while continuing to learn from other accomplished professionals. Whether the conversation concerns procurement and vendor relationships, operational resilience, facilities and infrastructure, emergency preparedness, stakeholder conflict, organizational risk, budgets, logistics, or governance, Chris approaches the issue through the lens of experience, preparation, collaboration, and practical problem-solving. Her career demonstrates that leadership is not limited to a title; it is expressed through responsibility, consistency, service, and a willingness to act thoughtfully when others are relying on the outcome.
Character:
Chris demonstrates character through a longstanding commitment to responsibility, public service, community involvement, and helping others in circumstances ranging from everyday operational challenges to genuine emergencies. Her work in governance, healthcare security, municipal enforcement, firefighting, and volunteer service reflects an approach grounded in accountability, composure, fairness, and respect for the people affected by her decisions.
Knowledge:
She brings approximately four decades of professional experience spanning supply chain management, procurement, logistics, inventory, sales, administration, governance, security, emergency response, and conflict resolution. Her combination of formal education, technical preparation, operational experience, and continuous learning enables her to examine organizational issues from multiple perspectives rather than through the lens of a single discipline.
Strategic:
Chris understands how individual operational decisions connect to larger organizational objectives, having worked with forecasts, budgets, supplier performance, contracts, inventory requirements, infrastructure projects, international logistics, risk, and continuous improvement. Her board and management experience further enables her to balance immediate requirements with longer-term considerations involving resources, stakeholders, resilience, and organizational sustainability.
Communication:
Spending her career communicating across diverse audiences, including executives, suppliers, customers, employees, contractors, residents, patients, families, public officials, emergency personnel, and community members. Her experience with negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution, de-escalation, public education, and stakeholder engagement has strengthened her ability to listen carefully, communicate clearly, and remain constructive even when conversations occur under pressure.
