Christine C. Durst
Co-Founder & CEO

Christine Durst, founder of the Virtual Assistance industry, is co-founder and CEO of Staffcentrix, LLC.

Prior to founding Staffcentrix, Chris was the CEO of one of the Internet's most successful Virtual Assistant practices, with clients drawn from the first wave of businesses in North America, Europe, and Australia migrating to the Web. Her experience also includes independent management consulting in the Boston region, advising such Fortune 100 companies as Data General Corp., Kraft Foods, and 3M. 

Chris has consulted extensively on corporate training programs, and has advised and mentored thousands of successful "eEntrepreneurs" internationally. At ease among more conventional corporate leaders, Chris has also negotiated strong relationships with such companies and organizations as Microsoft, Ernst & Young, and the United Nations Development Programme.

Chris co-developed The Portable Career & Virtual Assistant Training Program for Military Spouses™ and The e-Entrepreneur Training Program for Foreign Service Spouses™ for the US armed forces and the US Department of State.

As an international authority on Virtual Outsourcing, Chris has appeared often in the media, including Forbes, Business Week, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, the Singapore Straits Times, and the London Times.

Chris has been honored for her entrepreneurial leadership by Ernst & Young (nominated for  Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2000) and Working Woman Magazine, and is a past honoree of Chase Bank’s select "Working Woman of the Month."

Chris is the company's lead trainer and is frequently hired to keynote and present at a wide variety of venues including the Dept. of Defense Spouse Employment Conference, The National Association of Realtors©, Chase Bank, Dept. of Labor Workforce Innovations Conference, The Association of Job Search Trainers Conference, and Small Business Administration Roundtables.

Leading Staffcentrix’ New England office, Chris resides in Connecticut with her daughter and her cats - Cheese and Nero. Her son in in the US Air Force where he is training as an Arabic linguist.

Michael D. Haaren, Esq.
Co-Founder & COO

Michael Haaren is co-founder and COO of Staffcentrix, LLC and editor of The Rat Race Rebellion.

A great-grandson of the Fifteenth Commandant of the  Marine Corps, with a stint as a “Third Culture” child in Thailand (Michael’s uncle, with whom he lived, was a career USIA officer), Michael comes from a typically diverse international background. After Thailand, Army service in Germany, and a teaching sojourn in Milan, Michael resided for seven years in Paris, where he consulted on management issues to such French corporations as Dassault Aviation and Credit Lyonnais, and lectured at the University of Paris.

A former Wall Street attorney, Michael co-founded Staffcentrix in 1999. He has since advised, trained and mentored hundreds of successful self-employed “trailing spouses” internationally, and been instrumental in the worldwide growth of portable careers through the Virtual Assistant/Virtual Professional industry.

Often featured in the international media (Business Week, The London Times, The Singapore Straits Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc.), Michael has also been invited to present at the UN, to several Presidential Employment Committees, and to various SBA, DoD and DoL roundtables and working groups on entrepreneurship and portable careers.

A nominee for Ernst & Young's prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Michael graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Georgetown University and earned his Juris Doctor at the University of Virginia. He is a member of the New York Bar, and makes his home in Northern Virginia.