Karen Richardson is an American executive. Her 30-year career in the software business includes positions in several companies.
Career
Richardson was a member of the board of directors of BT Group plc. from November 2011 to July 2018 and payment-processing company Worldpay from 2016 to 2019, when it was sold to FIS for $43 billion. Other boards on which Richardson serves include Exponent, a Silicon Valley-based engineering and scientific consulting company she joined in 2013, and Ayasdi, a Palo Alto company developing a machine learning and artificial intelligence platform. Richardson was named among the "100 most influential women in tech" by a technology industry website in 2015. Richardson was a board member of VirtuOz until January 2013, when the company was purchased by Nuance Communications; 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, 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. Richardson is a former adviser to Silver Lake Partners, a private equity investment firm. Additionally, Richardson serves on the board of the San Francisco Opera, 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. 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 Corp. from 1995–1998. As executive vice president of sales at Netscape, Richardson concentrated on markets such as telecommunications and financial services 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 Corporation in a variety of sales and marketing roles as well as at cc:Mail and 3Com Corporation. Richardson holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and award distinctions from the Stanford Industrial Engineering Department and the American Institute of Industrial Engineers.
