Karen Richardson
Encyclopedia
Karen Richardson's 25-year career in the software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

 business includes positions as a key player in several well-known and highly successful companies.

In November 2011, Richardson joined the board of directors of BT Group
BT Group
BT Group plc is a global telecommunications services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the largest telecommunications services companies in the world and has operations in more than 170 countries. Through its BT Global Services division it is a major supplier of...

 plc. The company, which has operations in more than 170 countries, is one of the world's largest telecommunications services companies.

Richardson is also chairwoman of the board of directors of San Francisco-based Hi5 Networks Inc.
Hi5 (website)
hi5 is a social networking website based in San Francisco, California. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi. By 2008, comScore reported that hi5 had become the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors....

 In April 2011, the company announced that it has become the sixth-largest online gaming site, with 21.7 million unique monthly visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix. The designation reflects an ongoing strategic shift for the company, which in its incarnation as a social-networking site once claimed 70 million active users but has since refocused on gaming.

Richardson is a former adviser to Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake is a US-based private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries...

, a private equity investment firm concentrating on technology companies. She also sat on the board of i2, a Silver Lake-owned developer of investigative analysis software, until the company was sold to IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 in October 2011. At the time of the announcement, i2 announced that 12 of the top 20 retail banks used the company's software.

Additionally, Richardson serves on the advisory boards of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and Proofpoint Inc., which provides email security and compliance products. She is also on the board of directors of VirtuOz, which automates customer-service functions for Web sites.

Prior to joining Hi5, Richardson was chief executive of E.piphany
Epiphany, Inc.
Epiphany, Inc. , previously known as E.piphany and Epiphany Marketing Software, was a company developing Customer Relationship Management software. On September 29, 2005, Epiphany was acquired by SSA Global Technologies. Epiphany CRM software is now produced by Infor, which acquired SSA Global...

, a developer of customer relationship management software. She also held several senior sales positions at Netscape Communications
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

 Corp. from 1995–1998, during which time Netscape's sales grew from $80 million to over $500 million annually. As executive vice president of sales at the browser pioneer, Richardson concentrated on key vertical markets such as telecommunications and Financial Services
Financial services
Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...

; she also helped the company develop new markets, including e-commerce, consumer Internet access and enterprise applications. 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
Lotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...

 Corporation in a variety of sales and marketing roles as well as at cc:Mail and 3Com Corporation
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...

.

Richardson holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 and award distinctions from the Stanford Industrial Engineering Department and the American Institute of Industrial Engineers
Institute of Industrial Engineers
The Institute of Industrial Engineers is a professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession and individuals involved with improving quality and productivity...

 (AIIE). She is married to Jon Rubinstein
Jon Rubinstein
Jonathan J. Rubinstein is an American computer scientist and electrical engineer who helped create the iPod, the portable music and video device first sold by Apple Computer Inc. in 2001...

, senior vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard Company’s
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 Palm Global Business Unit and former senior vice president of Apple Inc.'s iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...

 division.

Her grandfather was a farmer from Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

 who graduated with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering
Chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...

 from Stanford; her mother entered Stanford at 16 to study mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and her father is also a Stanford alumnus.

External links

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