Advancing Coatings Performance

Kris Stearns leads R&D and Technical Operations at a specialty coatings manufacturer, overseeing formulation development and technical strategy across thousands of SKU’s in a portfolio of alkyd, polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, and acrylic coating systems.

With close to three decades in specialty chemicals and industrial coatings — starting on the bench as a lab manager and building through product development leadership before a corporate acquisition brought him to his current role — Kris brings hands-on formulation expertise grounded in real production environments, not theory. His technical foundation includes time in heavy equipment manufacturing and paint and coatings.

His work spans technical review of formulation and production data, raw material sourcing and supplier qualification, and regulatory compliance documentation, all aimed at one goal: getting coatings that perform right, the first time, at scale. He's currently applying that same discipline to closing the training gap for new formulators — building educational content that treats formulation as the learnable, repeatable process it actually is.

Kris is a varsity assistant football coach at a local High School. It's a step removed from his day job running R&D and technical operations at a specialty coatings manufacturer, but the two aren't as disconnected as they sound — both come down to the same thing: taking people who know the fundamentals and getting them to execute them consistently, under pressure, when it actually counts. He got into coaching the way most assistant coaches do — not because there was a shortage of X's and O's people, but because there's always a shortage of people willing to show up every practice and do the unglamorous parts of the job.