King Harris

A long-time Board member of the Metropolitan Planning Council, Mr. Harris focuses much of his time on working to expand the availability of affordable workforce housing in the six-county Chicago Metropolitan region.

After graduating from college in 1965, Mr. Harris spent two years in the Peace Corps as a community development worker in Lota, Chile. After receiving his M.B.A. in 1969, he became a neighborhood center director for the Office of Economic Opportunity in Revere and Malden, Massachusetts.

In 1971, Mr. Harris joined Pittway Corporation, first at its burglar alarm components division in Syosset, New York, then as an executive of its smoke detector business in Aurora, Illinois. In May of 1984, Mr. Harris became the President of Pittway, a diversified manufacturer of alarm equipment and plastic packaging components for consumer products as well as a publisher of business-to-business magazines. He became CEO as well in 1987 and later engineered the split up of Pittway into three separate NYSE listed companies: an alarm equipment and distribution company which retained the name of Pittway; an international packaging company, AptarGroup, Inc.; and a business-to-business media company, Penton Media. In February of 2000, Pittway was sold to Honeywell International.