Mike Kyrilis is StrongArm’s senior director of activation, organizing all aspects of our new customer deployment strategy, fostering onsite engagement and implementation intelligence that excites and aligns all enterprise stakeholders. He is our expert in industrial change management strategy. With his extensive background of in-person, boots-on-the-ground sales, executive level strategy, and industrial risk management, Mike leads the Activation Team at Strongarm, a new addition to our ranks designed to close the loop between prospects and long term buyers by demonstrating the power of StrongArm’s SafeWork System through onsite, impact focused, experiences.
READ MORE:Breaking Down The SafeWork System Activation Program
In his free time, you can find Mike working out at The Fitness Factory, lowering his impressive handicap on the golf course, or spending time with his family in Charlotte or at one of the many national parks he’s traveled to.
To help you get to know him better, we asked Mike a few questions.
What did you do before StrongArm? What are you most proud of accomplishing?
Before StrongArm, I worked for Travelers Insurance, a large P&C insurance carrier, in their central region national account unit as a safety consultant. I was responsible for distributing safety services to policy holders designed to mitigate portfolio risk through IH, Ergonomics, Fleet and BBS programs. I did that for five years, and then joined StrongArm in August 2020.
I have an extensive background in risk management, including an associate in risk management (ARM) certification. I’ve applied this background – which was trying to assess and correct risk – to helping build and sell a product that targets the root cause of injuries – behavior.
I am most proud of successfully making a transition from insurance to technology and getting to do it for a company with a real, tangible, mission, while at the same time, picking up and moving to North Carolina where I am starting a family. Professionally, being a leader in innovation within Travelers lead me to building a plan for wearables and ultimately towards StrongArm’s solution.
How long have you been at StrongArm? What originally interested you?
I’ve been here for two years come August. But I was actually introduced to the business a year before that.
During my tenure at Travelers, I had introduced our SafeWork System to one of our premier manufacturing customers. They were looking for more data than we could give them, so StrongArm was a natural fit.
For me, what interested me was the idea of using more accurate, more comprehensive data to improve how we treat and service industrial organizations and Industrial Athletes specifically. That proactive, behavioral data set that we collect is what originally attracted me. It’s doing something impactful for a group that’s relied upon very un-impactful products and services, which has been like archaic stretch programs and checklists and clipboards. I was really attracted to building a product that actually drives meaningful change as opposed to something that is a compliance topic. Moving from compliance to impact in the safety industry is what excited me about joining.
What are you most proud of accomplishing at StrongArm?
There are two things that I’m most proud of because I’ve played a multi-tool role at StrongArm, and have been able to both evolve our insurance partnership channels and how we drive new revenue streams.
When I started with StrongArm, we were a plunky startup that was doing incredible things with some large customers. In my two years with the company, we have evolved into a dynamic organization with significant stakeholders and a tenured product.
I personally have contributed to that by converting pilots like Lineage Logistics to long term customers and building a new ‘Activation’ team that has already successfully piloted our technology with 15+ customers in 2022.
What are you most excited about working on?
I’m most excited about working with StrongArm as we bridge the chasm between just a safety tool into an operational efficiency tool, using our enhanced analytics and additional hardware to merge health and wellness with industrial operations.
I think we’re getting to a point where we become a tool that’s not just used to reduce injuries, but to increase how operations operate as well. We’re becoming a tool that increases the efficiency of the workflow of the Industrial Athletes with health and wellness as the foundation, with through-put, efficiency and turnover/retention as subsequent values.
We’re building tools that will do that in the form of athlete profiles, area mapping and safety games, and I’m excited to get there.
What are your favorite things to do outside of work and why?
I spend most of my weekends golfing, hanging with my dog and my wife, researching investment ideas, finding sports to gamble on and drinking IPA’s with our marketing team, haha.
Most notably, I am expecting my first child in the fall and enjoying the process of expecting.
Then, between road biking, working out and traveling across the country from the Smokeys to the Rockies to Boundary Waters and everywhere in between, I am a big believer of staying in motion. And a healthy dose of coffee doesn’t hurt.
