Karen Parrish

Karen recently retired from a 30-year career at IBM and provides consulting for non-profit and for-profit companies on business and technology. Her goal is to leverage her unique skills in strategy, operations and business management for the benefit of organizations in transformation.

During her tenure at IBM, Karen served in a variety of leadership positions. In her role as Consulting Partner for the State of New York, she engaged with state leaders at the NYPD, Department of Health and the MTA to drive innovative solutions to address the state’s most critical needs. She was appointed to this position in March of 2016.

Prior to this, Karen was given the opportunity to lead an incubation business focused on developing industry specific software solutions. With a concentration on the Public Sector, she managed a cross functional team of developers, architects and sales to increase IBM’s penetration of software in these growing industries. She held this executive position for 5 years. In 2011, Karen was appointed to the role of Global Vice President of Industry Solutions where she ran the operations, budget and marketing functions for this new business venture.

Karen’s deepest technical skills are in the area of data and analytics resulting from dedicating seven years of her career building IBM’s presence in the analytics space.

From 2001-2007, she and her team delivered significant growth across IBM’s data and analytics software products and services. Karen led the acquisition of many software companies along a strategic intent to accelerate the growth of the data and information management division.

In June of 2000, Karen was selected for the position of Executive Assistant to the General Manager of Pervasive Computing. This coveted “Executive in Training” role, gave Karen the opportunity to manage the operational and customer relationship activities for IBM’s emerging Pervasive Computing business.

Previously, Karen was responsible for the deployment of an investment management system designed to drive software integration. She joined IBM in 1986 and spent her first ten years in IBM’s sales force as a Client Executive in the Distribution Sector servicing customers such as Kmart and Melville.

Karen attended Fordham University where she earned a Bachelor of Science and later obtained her Master of Business Administration from Pace University. She was married for twenty-five years and is the mother of two daughters. She is recently widowed. Currently, Karen sits on the Board of Trustees at St. Barnabas Hospital and the Board of Directors at Burke Neurological Institute. She is an adjunct professor for Fordham University’s Executive MBA program.