Nathan Artz (’01) Medical Physicist at Children’s Mercy Kansas City
Nathan Artz graduated from Truman State University summa cum laude in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, soon followed by a Master of Education from Rockhurst University. As a high school physics teacher in his mid-twenties, Nathan learned about the field of medical physics and immediately applied to graduate programs. At 27 years old, he and his wife Katie (whom he met at Truman) moved from Kansas City to Madison, WI with their first child in tow (Grace, only 6 weeks old), where Nathan completed his Master of Science degree and PhD in medical physics from the University of Wisconsin.
During graduate school, Nathan specialized in medical imaging, performing MRI physics research for his dissertation. Afterward he became a scientist for the university. During his time at UW-Madison, Nathan published many MRI research papers and received several patents. While at UW-Madison, Nathan spent his post-doctoral research comparing Dual-energy Computed Tomography with MRI for the quantification of liver fat using a mouse model. As an MRI Research Scientist with the university, he served as a project manager for an R01 study evaluating the use of MR proton density fat fraction (PDFF) as a biomarker in fatty liver disease, developed a spectrally-resolved fully phase-encoded (SR-FPE) MRI technique to allow distortion-free imaging near metallic implants and discovered multiple approaches for accelerating the acquisition, and tested feasibility for MR-based detection of neuroblastoma using anti-GD2 iron-oxide nanoparticles in mice.
In 2014, Nathan’s family of six moved to Memphis, TN, where he worked at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, gaining clinical experience in image quality optimization, scan time reduction techniques, radiation safety, and equipment inspections across all diagnostic imaging modalities. He designed a 7T mouse protocol to achieve high spatial resolution bone imaging with multiple contrast mechanisms for the purpose of studying osteonecrosis, modified MR pulse sequences to enable whole-body, water-fat separation across multiple software platforms and field strengths, and developed algorithms for automated segmentation of intra-abdominal and subcutaneous adipose tissues.
Nathan and his family returned to Kansas City in 2020, where he currently works as a board-certified medical physicist in Radiology at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Nathan also serves as Associate Professor in Radiology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, School of Medicine, where he teaches imaging physics to radiology residents in preparation for their board exam. More recently, Nathan launched a business providing radiation inspections for x-ray devices in the Kansas City area.
Outside of work, Nathan loves spending time with his wife and four daughters, attending many school events, from choir and band concerts to musicals and plays. When he finds free time, he enjoys studying the bible, reading fantasy novels, and playing pickleball.
Chris Wallen (’95) Managing Director of Customer Experience Strategy at VML
Chris Wallen, a 1995 Truman State University graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, is an award-winning customer experience and design leader known for anticipating what organizations and customers will need next. As Managing Director of Customer Experience Strategy at VML, he has spent 26 years building practices at the intersection of people, technology, and change – creating capabilities and solutions before emerging gaps become obvious. His work spans technology, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, government, and education for organizations including Colgate-Palmolive, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Burger King, Lucasfilm, Google, Sherwin-Williams, Wendy’s, John Deere, the U.S. Navy Recruiting Command, Teach for America, City Year, and Northwest Evaluation Association. Throughout his career, Chris has demonstrated three connected leadership strengths: recognizing needs before they become obvious, bringing together disciplines that often work separately, and building practical capabilities that endure. His journey demonstrates how a liberal arts education can prepare graduates not for one predefined path, but for a lifetime of creating the next one.
At Truman, Chris performed with the Franklin Street Singers Show Choir and gained hands-on research experience in the psychology laboratories of Dr. Fred Schaefer and Sal Costa. Schaefer, Costa, and Dr. Cole Wilcox helped him recognize that his greatest strength was not specialization in one field, but the ability to connect ideas, people, and disciplines. That insight became the foundation of his career, enabling him to move from nonprofit service into technology, user experience design, and customer experience leadership while continuing to ask better questions and build solutions collaboratively. He sees this ability to connect disciplines as the enduring Truman difference—and a superpower for graduates confronting challenges no single field can solve alone.
Chris began his career in nonprofit service, learning to recognize unmet needs and build practical responses. After an internship at Don Bosco Centers in Kansas City, he was promoted to Director of the Youth Center serving at-risk youth. He later became a Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City site director and helped establish a new club at Blenheim Elementary, expanding services for local youth. These roles taught him to translate community needs into sustainable programs and developed the listening, collaboration, and implementation skills he would carry into technology, design, and customer experience leadership.
At Gateway 2000, Chris moved into technology, providing consulting and technical support to the federal government. The role allowed him to apply the listening, problem-solving, and implementation skills he developed in nonprofit service to increasingly complex technology challenges, bridging his community-focused beginnings and his later career in digital experience. Anticipating the growing importance of digital technology, Chris joined VML as an Interactive Project Manager in December 1999, when the company was a 50-person Kansas City agency. He became a Technologist in June 2000, expanding his expertise in technology, delivery, and client leadership. In January 2001, he identified the need for a role connecting technology, design, and human behavior, created the position of Experience Architect, and served in it through 2005.
Over the following decades, he contributed to VML’s evolution into a global WPP network, helping build multidisciplinary capabilities in customer experience, user experience, experience strategy, and marketing technology. As the gap widened between what digital products could do and what people needed, Chris continued to broaden his perspective. In January 2006, he created the role of Digital Account Planner, combining customer insight, business strategy, and technology. In February 2010, he became Partner, Group Director of User Experience and founded VML’s User Experience practice group, building a department around an emerging market need. He later expanded the practice into Experience Design and co-founded the Content Systems practice. Named Partner, Managing Director of UX in October 2011, he led multidisciplinary teams through December 2019, uniting strategy, design, technology, and content to make digital interactions more useful, intuitive, and human-centered. In December 2019, Chris became Managing Director of Customer Experience Strategy, extending his leadership pattern across the agency: anticipating shifts in customer expectations and technology, identifying capability gaps, and building solutions before the need became obvious. He expanded customer experience strategy across VML and founded the agency’s Customer Experience University Program to develop those capabilities throughout the organization. Today, he leads cross-functional VML and client teams that transform customer friction into opportunity, translates emerging technologies into better experiences, and equips organizations to sustain improvement beyond a single engagement. His current focus includes applying AI agents and conversational AI to customer and employee experiences through initiatives such as Wendy’s FreshAi drive-thru platform.
Guide Dots exemplifies the approach that has defined Chris’s career. He served as both the project’s executive sponsor and as the strategist on the three-person VML team, working alongside a visual designer and a technologist in Kansas City. Together, the team developed and launched a free global Android application that helped people who are blind or visually impaired navigate urban environments more independently. Designed for broad accessibility, the crowdsourced walking guide combined Google Maps technology, voice activation, and community-contributed audio descriptions to identify storefronts, architecture, and streetscapes often omitted by traditional GPS applications. Guide Dots won the Transportation Advancements category at the 2015 SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards, recognizing the team’s ability to identify an unmet need, unite diverse disciplines, and apply emerging technology to create an inclusive, human-centered solution. Chris’s work has also been recognized at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the Acquia Engage Awards. His credentials reinforce the breadth of his leadership across agile delivery and human-centered strategy: he is a Scrum Alliance-certified Scrum Master and Product Owner, holds Forrester Customer Experience Certification, and is a LUMA Institutecertified Practitioner of Human-Centered Design.
Chris extends his commitment to building future-ready capabilities into education, mentoring students and advising institutions on curriculum, technology, and the skills employers need from new graduates. For more than a decade, he has served Northwest Missouri State University through the Professional Advisory Committee for its School of Communication and Mass Media and through Knacktive, its interdisciplinary student-run agency, where he is a faculty adviser and lecturer. He also serves on Truman State University’s Computer and Data Sciences Visiting Advisory Committee. Previously, he taught graduate-level human factors as an adjunct professor at Missouri Western State University and lectured on human-centered design and design thinking at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College’s School of Advanced Military Studies. Chris also applies his collaborative leadership locally. He serves on the Executive Board of the Kansas City Chapter of the Truman State University Alumni Association and has supported the Platte County R-3 School District through its District Technology Planning Committee, LongRange Facility Planning Committee, Community Advisory Board, and Parent Advisory for Equity and Inclusion. Across these roles, he has brought community perspectives into decisions about technology, facilities, student support, and the district’s future.
Chris met his wife, Susan (’95), at Truman, beginning a family connection to the university that now spans generations. Their daughter, Liberty, earned her bachelor’s degree from Truman in 2026 and is expected to complete her Master of Arts in Education in 2027. Their son, Cooper, is a competitive gamer who ranks among the top 1.5% of League of Legends competitors in North America. Chris lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he enjoys vintage Toyota trucks, rucking, kayaking, fishing, gaming with his family, and planning visits to Walt Disney World. Whether restoring a truck, exploring the outdoors, or tackling a professional challenge, he brings the same curiosity that has guided his career: understanding how things work, imagining what they could become, and bringing the next possibility to life.
Thomas Palmatier (’77) Leader and Commander of The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own“
Colonel Thomas Palmatier culminated a distinguished military career spanning more than 37 years as the Leader and Commander of The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” the largest military music unit in the United States and was the senior musician in the U.S. Armed Forces. Previously he commanded the Musical Ambassadors of the Army, The U.S. Army Field Band, being the first Officer to command the Army’s two top premier bands. Other postings included the founding Commandant (dean equivalent) of the U.S. Army School of Music, Commander and Conductor of the U.S. Army Europe Band and Chorus, Commander and Conductor of The U.S. Continental Army Band, and Associate Bandmaster of The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” where he directed The U.S. Army Herald Trumpets and The Army Brass Band.
Colonel Palmatier’s United States performances have spanned all 50 states and included concerts in the John F. Kennedy Center, Constitution Hall, and Strathmore Music Center in the Washington, D.C. area, the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, and Bass Hall in Fort Worth. He has appeared in 54 countries and performances have included concerts in the Rudolfinium in Prague, the Beijing Concert Hall, the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, and a rare performance inside the Kremlin.
Colonel Palmatier is currently Editor-in-Chief of SBO+ Magazine, the most widely distributed music education magazine in the U.S. He is an active clinician, guest conductor, and consultant on organizational structures and leadership around the world. He was founding Music Director of the Virginia International Tattoo and led the Dominion Brass Band to the Honors Division championship of the North American Brass Band Association. He was Director of Symphonic and Jazz Bands at the Czech Youth Music Camp and is a Conn-Selmer Educational Clinician. He is President of the Board of Directors of the Music Teacher Guild, is Director of the Colorado Jazz Workshop, and is manager of the Evergreen School of Ballet.
Colonel Palmatier’s academic credentials include a Doctor of Music degree (Honorary) from the State University of New York, a Master of Strategic Studies degree from the U.S. Army War College, a Master of Fine Arts degree in Music Education from Truman State University, and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam’s Crane School of Music. His advanced leadership training at the U.S. Army War College and Command & General Staff College and professional experience have made him an expert on leadership and management of arts organizations.
Colonel Palmatier has received numerous awards and recognitions. Military awards include the Army Distinguished Service Medal, three awards of the Legion of Merit, and seven Meritorious Service Medals. He was the first Army Music Officer to wear both Parachutist and Air Assault badges and earned the right to wear a Combat Service Identification Badge for service in El Salvador and Iraq. He is a member of the American Bandmasters Association and a Director of the John Phillip Sousa Foundation, as well as an Honorary Life Member and Past President of the North American Brass Band Association. He has been inducted into several “Halls of Fame” for his achievements.