Luke Kanies ’96 and his wife, Cindy, first met in a Reed seminar during his junior year. As she tells it, “he always had something to say about everything.” His outspoken ways in the classroom made her seek out the most comfortable spot she could find: whatever seat was as far as possible from his.
But times have changed… Luke still has his passion for computers and bicycles, but Cindy and Luke are now married, living in the Alameda area, and parenting twin daughters. And Luke, after a string of short-term jobs, has become founder and CEO of Portland’s Puppet Labs, a 400 employee company housed in a newly remodeled high-rise in downtown Portland. Lately Luke has been juggling two all-consuming tasks: taking Puppet Labs public (the IPO is currently scheduled for 2016) and maintaining his iconoclastic lifestyle: the family man who can bike or walk 4 miles to work and find time to root for Arsenal. You can learn more about the formerly-mohawk-topped Reed biochemist in “Puppet Labs CEO Luke Kanies: Comfortable as iconoclast” (Mike Rogoway, Oregonian, 5 Dec 2015).