"The name Charter Oak stems from a long lineage of entrepreneurs in my family. Named in honor of my of my great-great grandfather's wagon company, Joel Turney & Co's Charter Oak Wagons, based in Fairfield, Iowa in 1887 after moving from Trenton, Iowa” Charter Oak Wagons.

My father, Dr. DL "Hank" Harris founded Harrisvaccines in 2006 and I would join in 2008. Harrisvaccines was a animal health vaccine technology platform that led to rapid-response vaccine development creating novel vaccine products for newly emerging and mutating viral diseases in the livestock and companion animal industries. Riding the rollercoaster of setbacks and successes allowed my father and I to grow the company from a handful of employees to almost 50 employees and was recognized by Inc. Magazines top 5000 fastest growing US companies in 2015 (number 867) with approximately $10 million in gross annual sales and three-year growth rate of 490%. We accomplished our exit strategy goal by completing a Merger and Acquisition with Merck Animal Health in November of 2015. 

My main function was to lead the integration of the two businesses it gave me an opportunity to learn and grow my marketing/writing, business development, and leadership skills through the extensive resources of a global large pharmaceutical company.

Looking forward, I hope to take the extensive entrepreneur skills and meld what I’ve recently learned from the large corporate arena to into a creative problem solver with newly advanced strategic marketing toolkits through our non-traditional consulting platform, Charter Oak Creative.

We are participating in the startup and entrepreneur "boom" that is occurring in the midwest.