Ken Schmid leads KONE Americas as Executive Vice President, also serving as a member of KONE’s Executive Board. In this role, he is responsible for leading the KONE Americas organization, including teams across the United States, Canada and Latin America. As a senior executive with extensive international, cross-functional and multi-C-suite experience, Ken is accomplished in leading the strategic planning, change management and operation of the organization to implement activities delivering profitable growth.
Prior to his current role, Ken served as senior vice president of finance for KONE Americas. Across his career, he’s also served as senior vice president of Global Information Services for KONE Corporation based in Brussels and was responsible for the creation of the global information technology organization. In such roles he helped to leverage scale and improve the financial impact of solutions development along with reliability of infrastructure.
Before his international assignment, Ken served as the senior vice president - CIO for KONE Americas, where he led the SAP implementation along with other strategic solution developments. Previously, Ken held the role of vice president of quality with responsibility for U.S. branch offices, factories, spares centers and headquarters.
Earlier in his career Ken held various new equipment sales roles in multiple branch offices within KONE. Ken began his career in 1986 with Montgomery Elevator Company.
Ken received his bachelor’s degree in American History from Purdue University and his master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.