You’re a Star
I enter a large warehouse through these heavy, industrial doors, and into a room filled with whiteboards on the right. Tyler B. welcomes me in, and offers me a coffee as I take a seat on some cheap, foldable plastic chairs.
“Welcome to the HoloDeck!”, says Tyler with a cheeky grin on his face. At this point I have some reservations about what I was getting into, but having worked with Tyler a fair bit, I trust him. We chit-chat, and I place my laptop on another set of ‘Costco-special’ plastic tables, ready to present my work.
A couple of minutes go by, and a tall figure emerges at the doorway, knocks the door a couple of times, and introduces himself.
“Hello, I’m Chris Waind.” as he reaches out with his gigantic hand for a handshake.
I instinctively think, is there a height requirement for this design team? Here I am, cornered by two massive guys that tower over me, ready to unleash their merciless critique onto my work.
After nervously going through pages of my portfolio, I want to know more about Finger Food Studios. I want to know more about what they do and how they do it. Chris instinctively picks up an Expo marker that’s in a pen holder on the table, and begins to put ink onto the surrounding whiteboards. I’m instantly dazzled. No one to my knowledge, could write in all-caps like he did. Little did I know, diagrams and handwriting were just a sliver of his true talent.
I think to myself, “Tyler, you made the right move coming here, and I’m coming along with you.” That was the power of Chris.
After a fascinating tour of the HoloDeck, and a few HoloLens demos, I was sold — albeit a strange 24,000sqft warehouse for an office, lacklustre office furniture, an off-ratio of people to toilets, and a coffee machine that sounded like it was going to devour your coffee mug.
Almost immediately after that, Chris made it clear that he had a Senior Designer spot for me on my team, and he made it a priority to expedite the process for me. I joined the team in June 2017 and eventually advanced to an Associate Creative Director role, and now Creative Director. If it was not for Chris and others who saw my potential, I wouldn’t be here at Unity working with the best clients and designers in the world.
I have been through quite a few interviews during my time at Finger Food, and candidates almost always ask what we like about working here. “Projects, people, and leadership.”, I always say with a big smile on my face. And Chris was a major factor in all of those.
Chris exerted a significant amount of effort and energy in pitching to the top clients around the world with Ryan, and never stopped chasing bigger and bigger clients. He had no quit. Chris was a person that genuinely cared about people he was working with, utilized everyone’s strengths, and embraced the weaknesses. He was an amazing mentor, director, and manager that guided you wherever you wanted to be, and provided encouragement when things were tough and dire. He was the figurative ‘big brother’. Chris was always there to offer or lend a helping hand when I personally encountered first-time problems (to me) as a new manager.
In the Summer of 2019, Chris and Ryan roped me into a top-secret project. You might’ve read about it here, but this was when Finger Food was in talks with a few companies, with Unity being one of them. Needless to say, the rest is history. I joined the company in 2017, but Chris was here much closer to the inception of Finger Food. I complain about the office décor and amenities, but it really is nothing compared to the stories Chris tells us. His journey started in 2015, and in the past 7 years, he has both done and chased after work that is nothing short of amazing.
Chris was not only an A-player at work, but an overall A-player as a person. He was never afraid to get his hands dirty and learn a new skill to save a few pennies (even though he could most definitely afford most, if not all things). It seems like a weird thing to brag about, but it’s not very often that your boss offers to renovate your kitchen. And Chris did exactly that, in the midst of his hectic schedule in both his personal and professional lives. Through this process, I not only got a new, beautiful, and (finally) usable part of the kitchen, but also an inspiration to learn a new hobby: woodworking. To see Chris build something out of nothing inspired me to delve into this hobby head-first. Chris was the ultimate craftsman in everything he did, and that alone is something to aspire to. I’ve had the absolute privilege and pleasure to share this passion of woodworking with him, spending extra minutes on Zoom calls to talk about passion projects and unnecessarily expensive tools, and texting each other about random deals we find on the internet.
One of my biggest regrets in life is not staying on a Zoom call with you a week ago before the unthinkable happened, when you asked, “Do you have a few extra minutes to talk woodworking?”. Little did I know that that would be our last opportunity to talk shop.
One day, Chris, I’ll get that track saw you keep telling me to buy.
There are only two other people outside of my family that I’ve really cried for when it comes to these situations. The first was the passing of Michael Jackson, and the second was Kobe Bryant’s helicopter accident. Michael and Kobe were icons and legends in their respective arenas, and were revered and respected wherever their song was played or a basketball was bounced.
Chris Waind was the third. He made an enormous impact on a lot of us, and Chris will remain an icon and legend within our organization and Creative Team. We will continue to revere and respect the legacy that he has left, with every whiteboard we grace, and every pixel we push.
Chris was the star many people looked up to and admired, because we longed for the day to be there alongside him. I guess we will all have to wait just a little bit longer.
Rest in Peace, Chris.
