Karen brings extensive product strategy and technology management experience to the Osder Group. Karen was Sr. Director of Product Management for Yahoo News! Her product portfolio there included the core News site, news search, local news and social media. The strategy and roadmap she developed supported business goals to increase engagement (achieved 3x), grow video streams (achieved +60M streams in 6 mos) and improve photo gallery revenue (achieved +$2M/yr).

Prior to Yahoo!, Karen worked in the Education industry developing products for teachers and students at McGraw-Hill and Columbia University. At McGraw-Hill, Karen lead the technology effort to create a world-class Math tutoring and testing product as well as a suite of K-12 products. As Director of Technology at Columbia University, Karen was responsible for all technology needs for an educational startup focused on supporting new teachers in their first year. The award-winning program she developed is still in place across the east coast. In this role Karen was responsible for all technology and architecture decision. She worked closely with BlackBoard Inc. to develop a 1.0 version of the product and then eventually migrated the product to an open source platform.

Karen spent several years with top consulting companies – KPMG and iXL/Scient – managing a blend of technology and strategy engagements. While consulting with iXL/Scient, managed a global content management system development project for the FT.com. Karen’s expertise in online architecture and system design helped the FT.com change their online publishing process giving them the ability to publish in real-time. At iXL, she also generated over $4M in project work in her first year. She has managed teams of over 25 programmers, project managers, and subcontractors and handled critical c-level client relationships. She has also wrote white papers on asset management and broadband technologies. Her client list included Time, Inc., The New York Times, The Financial Times, Cablevision, NPR, and Red Herring.

As a Product Manager for The New York Times, Karen managed all aspects of developing The New York Times Learning Network, and a suite of web-based applications fostering community, knowledge sharing, and networking. Her responsibilities included technology strategy, product design, feature definition and prioritizations, market analysis, customer segmentation, profit and loss, marketing.

Karen brings 18 years experience in technology, with an expertise in high traffic consumer web sites and technology strategy and solutions for interactive product development. Her background in technology began as a reviews editor at Infoworld Magazine in the early 90s where she reviewed hardware, software, multimedia and communications products.

Karen holds a Bachelors degree from Boston College, and has completed a variety of training courses in Internet technologies. She is also a 4th degree black belt in Shorin-Ryu Okinawan Karate.