Kate is CEO of SWITCH and General Partner at the W Fund, a venture capital firm investing into women and underrepresented-led tech startups.
She’s lived in the tech startup world for almost 20 years, and has played an active leadership role in the women in tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem throughout, having previously led as President a global, 60+ chapter organization focused on the issue for several years prior to coming to Women 2.0 (now Switch) in 2016. The two decade combination of her operational experience in startups, her active work with thousands of early-stage founders, and her deep expertise on and central commitment to gender and representation in the ecosystem has positioned her as a expert and leader on the creation and development of a more equitable future for our innovation economy.
She’s also an EIR at LaunchNY, and a long-time mentor for Techstars. She’s held prior roles as CMO of untapt, an AI-driven tech talent marketplace based in NYC, COO of Atribute, a next-gen scaled learning platform, and Adjunct Professor in PR and Marketing at at Syracuse University.
Kate has keynoted, spoken at and been featured in 100s of places, including SXSW, Collision Conference, Fast Company, Fifteen Seconds, UNLEASH, Microsoft, IBM, MSNBC, Techcrunch, IBT, the BBC and Al Jazeera.
She holds BAs in Political Science and African American History from the University of Rochester, an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from Goizueta Business School at Emory University and an MA in International Relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
When she’s not doing all *that*, she’s a very non-professional (but adventurous!) athlete, an equally as non-professional musician, can be found outdoors in any weather — skiing, biking, hiking, sailing — loves a good meal with bubbly, craft beer and good friends, hilariousness and life. Her husband is a startup-web-developer-turned-beer-guy and they live on a hops farm in Upstate New York with their two boys.