This is just a first draft and will probably change over time.
CHARACTER BIOGRAPHY:
Knis was born on Coruscant to an honest, hardworking couple that owned a small parts and appliance shop. She grew up helping run the business, learning ship, droid, and speeder maintenance and repair, always expecting she would take over some day. When her mother fell ill, her exorbitant medical bills and inability to work forced the Hukoti family into bankruptcy, which in return eliminated their only means of paying Mrs. Hukoti's medical bills. Though both Mr. Hukoti and Knis found work doing odd jobs when they could find them on the harsh streets of Coruscant, they were only barely able to make ends meet, and Mrs. Hukoti passed away from lack of care.

Driven to despair by his wife's passing, Mr. Hukoti began to see the corruption on Coruscant he'd always been so determined to stay above in a new light: if he hadn't been so blinded by his principals, he could have employed the underhanded tactics his competitors had used to stay ahead, and his wife would still be alive. He also felt that if he and his family were human, such a tragedy would not have been allowed to pass. As time passed, he grew increasingly more radical, believing that by trying to balance a code of ethics with the Bothan way, he had disgraced his species, and made it ever harder for his daughter to advance in a human-centric galaxy by teaching her his own folly.

He began to re-educate her at once, homeschooling her and incorporating his self-written manifestos and notes as a dominant part of her "curriculum"--by the age of 16 Knis thouroughly shared her father's paranoia of other species and views on the Bothan way. This ignited a fierce ambition in her heart, grasping for the strings of the galaxy. Despite this, she was reluctant to enter politics--she deemed it too stereotypical and worried she would stagnate in the Senate if left at the mercy of a ballot.

Her hopes of gaining galactic power were not dashed, however. When hired as a mechanic for Czerka Corporation at age 19, she heard rumors that the massive business was largely self-policed. Keenly interested in the idea of a company outside of the Republic's control, Knis made Czerka her focus: she did any grueling task asked of her and even some that weren't asked; she put in any opportunities for overtime and sometimes (surreptitiously) off the clock. In her first nine months on the job she averaged about 75 working hours, paid or otherwise, per week, and was able to move up to more administrative roles, where she began to employ more of the underhanded tactics promoted by her father. This included false sexual harassment claims against other employees whose jobs she vied for, or simply those she viewed as a potential threat. It also included fudging paperwork and managing ships to hide Czerka's slaving operations, illegal in the Republic, on Kashyyyk and Avo.

As Avo was a planet only discovered relatively recently, Knis was able to play a large role in keeping the general public largely unaware of its existence by carefully funneling its funding into "back door" channels and making keen, selective decisions on which customers to sell "Avokin", the dominant species of the planet, as slaves to.

Because she was so busy with work, she neglected her father even as he developed an increasingly severe paranoid psychosis that lasted for ten months--until his suicide that Knis was not made aware of for two more years. When she finally heard the news, Knis was torn between feeling relief and guilt, and her career suffered as she withdrew from her path. When one morning she awoke with her father's voice in her head admonishing her for seemingly abandoning the career she'd chosen over him, Knis returned with a vengeance to make up for lost time.

During the time she had lapsed, other Czerka employees had discovered an Avokin on Manaan who'd been demanding passersby tell them where their people were, why none of them had left their homeworld. They'd been picked up by Manaan authorities, and Czerka had quietly arranged for them to be transferred to Czerka, and Czerka put the big winged alien to work lifting boxes in a factory. The Avokin, who referred to themself variably as "Kylay" and "Kile", was not registered as one that had ever been captured by Czerka, and Avokin lacked the technology for interstellar travel.

Concerned that her carefully groomed stories surrounding Avo had been jeopardized, Knis immediately went to visit the mysterious individual, posing as a fellow grunt factory worker and attempting to befriend them in order to find out who they were and how they got there. Part of this befriending involved teaching the Avokin to read and write in Basic, and "helping" them to set up a bank account through which they could be paid by Czerka; the bank account was, however, in Czerka's name.

When Kylay warmed up to Knis, they revealed that they'd gone with the Jedi from their homeworld as a youngling for training, but had failed their Initiate Trials time and time again, until they were finally asked to leave the Order as an adult. They refused to go home a failure and told Knis that they'd much rather be in the company of other members of their species that had left Avo, but nobody seemed to know they existed.

Knis was not sure what use she could make of Kylay at that time, but she didn't want anyone who had both ties to the Jedi and her most valuable curated secret to be out of the fold, so she made up a lie on the spot, telling them that no other Avokin had ever left Avo and that they refused contact with the outside world. She suggested Kylay could help to change their minds by working for Czerka so they could travel that galaxy and bring home a report of all it had to offer.

Kylay accepted, but only with great reluctance. It was clear they had no ambition; frequently they would express reservations and talk about simply going back to the Jedi, to help them even if they couldn't be one. Each time Knis steered them back around, a task that required she maintain a friendship with them that eventually grew to be genuine.

After a few years, Knis revealed some of her philosophy to Kylay, and they would study her father's writing together. They easily manipulated Kylay seemed eager to learn, and absorbed the information quickly. Knis encouraged them to adopt a similar philosophy with their own people, and that they could work with her to acheive it. She used her own connections to help raise Kylay through the ranks, and even had Czerka foot the bill for them to attend school to become a starpilot.

The relationship became intimate over time. This would be the one scandal that Knis would willingly allow marr the face of her career. It didn't matter to her; it would cease to be scandalous once the two of them had Czerka by the throat.

PERSONALITY:
Knis is a very severe person. She feels emotions more strongly than most; her primary feeling, the one that drives her, is manic ambition. Other emotions will sway her, and she is particularly moved by feelings of insecurity or sadness, but these are only temporary wrenched from her heart by ghost of her father and consumed by the fire in her heart. Nothing is too far beneath her that she will not try to use it to her advantage, and she will admit this readily to anyone who questions her. She works hard, and won't let ethics, or anything else, stand in her way.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS:
She's gay.