Karen is a serial entrepreneur and regional ecosystem leader who’s built a life and career helping others build businesses. She’ll tell you that entrepreneurship is in her DNA. That’s because she started her first business at age 6 selling petunias, continuing four generations of North Carolina family business owners. Her great-grandfather made wagon wheels in rural Eastern NC in a town that barely exists. Her grandfather ran a plumbing supply store on the Lumber River. Her father launched a small engineering business in Winston-Salem. And Karen has started numerous for-profit and non-profit ventures here in the Triad as well.

She’s built companies, teams, products, pitch decks, and communities; serves on the Board of a VC fund; and seen the highs and lows of startup life.

Today, she serves as the Ecosystem Development Officer for the Piedmont Triad Regenerative Medicine Engine, where she’s responsible for helping regional companies build, grow and scale their RM technologies, creating economic impact across a 16-county region. She’ll tell you she has the best job in all of North Carolina.