After years of working at the intersection of tech and real estate development, Chris Crosby founded Compass in 2011. His vision was to focus on greenfield projects and deliver customizable, scalable, sustainable, and low-cost data centers in an expedited time frame. Since, he led the company from completing its first 1.2MW data center in 2012 to serving campus-level hyperscalers with global developments less than a decade later.
Beyond his role at Compass, Crosby is dedicated to shaping the future of the industry’s workforce through education. He serves as a member of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering Datacenter Systems Engineering Advisory Board, where he was instrumental in developing the Master of Science in Datacenter Systems Engineering curriculum. Additionally, he launched the MEI Data Center Pathways Program at Texas State Technical College to bring more workers into “new-collar” jobs created by the data center industry.
In addition to Compass’ accolades (recognized by the Financial Times as one of the Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies, by Inc. Magazine’s as one of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies, and by the Dallas Business Journal as one of the Best Places to Work), Crosby himself was honored in 2023 as EY’s Southwest Area Entrepreneur of The Year.
