Karen Casella is a software engineer and advocate for inclusion in the technology industry. She is an engineering leader at Netflix and previously held leadership positions at eBay and SHOP.COM. She was also named a Lesbians Who Tech LGBTQ Tech and Innovation fellow.

Early life and education

Karen Casella grew up on the South Shore in Massachusetts. She attended

Worcester Polytechnic Institute '' , mottoeng = "Theory and Practice" , established = , former_name = Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science (1865-1886) , type = Private research university , endowme ...

, graduating in 1983 with a B.S. in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

Career

Casella began her career at

Maxtor Maxtor was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate in 2006. History Overview In 1981, three former IBM employ ...

, a company that manufactured hard disk drives. In 1993, she became a software engineer and architect at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. After 11 years at Sun, she served as Director of Application Architecture at

eBay, Inc. eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational corporation, multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer to consumer, consumer-to-consumer and business to consumer, business-to-consumer sales through ...

and then became Vice President of Site Development at

SHOP.COM Market America is a multi-level marketing company founded in 1992 by JR and Loren Ridinger. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the company employed around 800 people as of 2016. The products offered by the company include household clea ...

in 2005. In 2008, she was promoted to Vice President of Engineering, and in 2010, she became Senior Vice President of Engineering, leading the SHOP.COM engineering team and managing software development, quality assurance, and worldwide site operations. She is currently the engineering leader of

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

's Edge & Playback Access teams, which ensure that users are viewing content securely. In this position, she oversaw the implementation of the download feature, which allows users to download content onto their devices to watch without access to the Internet.

Advocacy work

Casella also advocates for inclusion of women, the LGBTQ community, and other underrepresented groups in technology. In 2017, she hosted a panel on diversity and inclusion in technology at the QCon software architecture conference. She was also selected as an LGBTQ Tech and Innovation fellow by Lesbians Who Tech. In this fellowship, she served as an engineering lead for an app, funded by the Tegan and Sara Foundation, which helps young queer women find mentors in their career area of interest.

References

External links

LinkedIn profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Casella, Karen Worcester Polytechnic Institute alumni American software engineers LGBT people from Massachusetts Year of birth missing (living people) Living people