Christi Chatmas

Christi Chatmas, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

A veteran of the golf course management world, Christi’s extensive experience afforded a highly unique, ripe foundation for Caddie Central’s inception. Throughout her career in managing full-time, high-volume courses and resorts in Central Texas, logging over 75,000 rounds per year, she procured a rare expertise in the golf course management industry. With her keen grasp of the industry, Christi single-handedly developed, successfully target-marketed, and secured high-dollar sponsorship packages for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to charitable entities. Harnessing new technological tools, Christi created an innovative marketing strategy for non-profits utilizing Google Grants. These, in tandem with customized merchandising and other traditional strategies, generated tens of thousands of free advertising dollars for her non-profit 501 organization clients.

In the course of her admirable golf services career, Christi fostered close relationships with PGA Sections and all major golf associations, engendering respect of her colleagues, clients, and employees alike. As a hands-on leader, Christi’s vast realm of responsibilities included caddie services training, often caddying herself alongside the teams she managed.

Spotting inherent weaknesses and an opportunity for improvement in the scheduling functionality at tee-time and non-tee-time facilities, the inspiration for Caddie Central was sparked. Christi and her husband John founded Caddie Central in 2005 on a mission to change the caddie services world. Drawing from her experience in managing golf tournament services and developing golf tournament websites, Christi set out to develop software that would revolutionize that industry, while providing unmatched caddying services with utmost integrity for high-end golf courses and resorts. The proven unprecedented functionality and scalability of the proprietary software suite developed by Christi, The Shack 1.0 and its successor The Shack 2.0 which is set for release in 2013, has solidified Christi Chatmas’s integral role as a trailblazer, innovator, and visionary in this industry.

Perhaps most important to Christi, Caddie Central not only provides measurable business value for the golf courses, resorts, companies, and charities it serves, but also gives back to its community in a variety of ways. Especially rewarding, Caddie Central’s renowned leadership and training methodology mentors its employees, often young adults, in character development. An informal company motto became “We’re making great future husbands”.

Christi’s Early Career

Christi’s earlier career began in 1992 at Smith Barney after graduating with a B.S. in Marketing and Psychology. She worked in the Institutional Fixed Income Trading & Underwriting Department at Smith Barney in Dallas, Texas for five years, where she was responsible for more than 20 of the firm’s largest bank clients. Her success at Smith Barney led to a move to Southwest Securities in 1997, where she acted as Liaison for all the Fixed Income operations.   

After achieving many of her career goals, Christi took time away from work to start a family in 2000. Now the mom of three amazing children, Christi lives with her family in Austin. When not devoting her time and energies to Caddie Central and to her family, Christi is honored to be an active member of Vistage International, and a passionate volunteer for a number of local charities, Christi’s time spent helping the less fortunate has led to some of her life’s most rewarding moments. Christi is an avid golfer and tennis player and enjoys spending time with her family, especially outdoors in the beautiful Austin Hill Country.

"The golf course is a good place of influence for young kids, and I see opportunities to help caddies grow into adults with strong values, work ethics and emotional intelligence."