Snowflakes: and other stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692524688)

For 16 years -- 10 of which as chairman and CEO - Chris Allison led Tollgrade Communications Inc. from technology start up to public company to being recognized as one of the Best Small Companies in America by Forbes, Fortune, Business 2.0, Bloomberg Personal Finance and Industry Week. In the year 2000, sales of Tollgrade's centralized telephone test systems hit $114 million and its value on the NASDAQ exchange reached $2 billion. For his efforts, Allison was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young, as well as by the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association. He was also named CEO Communicator of The Year by the Public Relations Society of America. Now, Allison devotes much of his time to Allegheny College, where he teaches entrepreneurship and managerial economics as the college's entrepreneur-in-residence. He is also a member of Allegheny's board of trustees. Allison has been a columnist for Pittsburgh Quarterly since the magazine's inception in 2005. For his writing, he is a two-time nominee and one-time winner of the Golden Quill Award from the Pittsburgh Press Club. Allison received an honorary doctorate from Clarion University in 2012. He and his wife Jane serve on the Clarion University Foundation board, and were the first ever "husband-and-wife" dual recipients of Clarion doctorates. Snowflakes is his second book, and first work of fiction. In 2013 he published You'll Manage: Lessons from a Former CEO, a collection of essays about the life and business wisdom Allison gathered as CEO of a publicly traded company.