Karen OBrien
Partner, Interactive Services, Crimson Consulting

As a Partner heading up Crimson’s Interactive Strategy Practice, Karen brings together business objectives, technology and user experience to deliver effective and high-value global web programs. Karen has more than 15 years of sales and marketing experience at the corporate and agency level, a decade of that experience in e-business strategy and execution. She’s worked with a wide diversity of clients, from rock bands and consumer-products and media companies to Fortune 500 technology companies. Her flexible, creative approach to meeting clients’ needs has benefited leading companies including HP, Microsoft, Seagate, Sun, Symantec, Verizon, Verio/NTT, Cisco, Deutsche Bank, Eastman Kodak, Visa, Yamaha, Disney and ABC.

Prior to Crimson, Karen was Director of e-Business Strategy Consulting for Grant Thornton/Hitachi Consulting, where she helped establish the San Francisco practice. She also co-founded Roundpeg, a web development company where she served as VP – Sales and Marketing, and has been a Guest Professor at the University of Ottawa’s executive-MBA program in Hong Kong.

In 2007 Karen won the American Marketing Association’s Thought Leadership Award for cutting edge marketing thinking.