Karen Richardson is an American executive. Her 30-year career in the
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
business includes positions in several companies.
Career
Richardson sits on several corporate boards including
BP, the British energy company;
Exponent
Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to re ...
, a Silicon Valleybased engineering and scientific consulting company; States Title, which uses machine learning to automate real estate closings, and Artius Capital, a
special-purpose acquisition company
A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC; ), also known as a "blank check company", is a shell corporation listed on a stock exchange with the purpose of acquiring a private company, thus making it public without going through the traditional i ...
.
Richardson was a member of the board of directors of
BT Group
BT Group plc (trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broa ...
plc. from November 2011 to July 2018 and payment-processing company
Worldpay from 2016 to 2019, when it was sold to
FIS
FIS or fis may refer to:
Science and technology
* '' Fis'', an ''E. Coli'' gene
* Fis phenomenon, a phenomenon in linguistics
* F⯠(musical note)
* Flight information service, an air traffic control service
* Frame Information Structure, a Se ...
for $43 billion.
Richardson was named among the "100 most influential women in tech" by https://hottopics.ht/ in 2015.
Richardson was a board member of VirtuOz until January 2013, when the company was purchased by
Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software.
Nuance merged with its compe ...
. She was on the advisory board of
Proofpoint Inc., a provider of email security and compliance products and was chairwoman of the board of directors of San Francisco-based
Hi5 Networks Inc. from 2008 until December 2011, when the company was purchased by social networker
Tagged Inc. Richardson has also sat on the boards of
HackerRank
HackerRank is a technology company that focuses on competitive programming challenges for both consumers and businesses. Developers compete by writing programs according to provided specifications. HackerRank's programming challenges can be solve ...
, a technology company that develops competitive programming challenges, and i2, a Silver Lake-owned developer of investigative analysis software, until the company was sold to
IBM in October 2011. She also served on the board of Ayasdi before it was sold, and on the advisory board of Convercent until its sale to
OneTrust in 2021.
Richardson is a former adviser to
Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have ...
, a private equity investment firm. She also is a former member of the board of the
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881â1953) based in San Francisco, California.
History
Gaetano Merola (1923â1953)
Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when he ...
, which she joined as part of a push by that institution to include more technology leaders. She also serves on the advisory board of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
.
Previously, Richardson served as chief executive of
E.piphany, a developer of customer relationship management software. She also held several senior sales positions at
Netscape Communications
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
Corp. from 1995â1998. As executive vice president of sales at Netscape, Richardson concentrated on markets such as
telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...
and
financial services
Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...
and the development of new markets. Prior to her position at Netscape, Richardson was VP of Worldwide Sales at Collabra Software, Inc., and worked for four years with
Lotus Development
Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2- ...
Corporation in a variety of sales and marketing roles as well as at cc:Mail and
3Com Corporation
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...
.
Richardson holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
and award distinctions from the Stanford Industrial Engineering Department and the American
Institute of Industrial Engineers
The Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), formerly the Institute of Industrial Engineers, is a professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession and individuals involved with improving q ...
(AIIE).
Personal life
Her grandfather was a farmer from
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...
who graduated with a Ph.D. in
chemistry
Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
from Stanford; her mother entered Stanford at 16 to study
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, and her father is also a Stanford alumnus. She is married to
Jon Rubinstein
Jonathan J. "Jon" Rubinstein (born October 1956) is an American electrical engineer who played an instrumental role in the development of the iMac and iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001. He lef ...
, former co-CEO of investment firm
Bridgewater Associates
Bridgewater Associates is an American investment management firm founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. The firm serves institutional clients including pension funds, endowments, foundations, foreign governments, and central banks.
It utilizes a globa ...
;
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Karen
American computer businesspeople
British Telecom people
Silver Lake (investment firm) people
Living people
Place of birth missing (living people)
Year of birth missing (living people)
Stanford University alumni
American women chief executives
American technology chief executives
21st-century American women