Karen Stephenson
After a joint liberal arts degree in quantum chemistry and art, Karen Stephenson went on to earn a master’s in Mathematical Modeling in Anthropology at the University of Utah where she worked with the mathematician Frank Harary deciphering patterns in ancient trade networks followed by a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Harvard University where she worked with statistician Marvin Zelen in exposing network patterns in the infamous AIDS network surrounding Patient Zero. While serving time as a professor of management at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, she started her own company NetForm with the encouragement and support of IBM. In that decade, she developed three software products containing algorithms for identifying repeating patterns in human networks in businesses, universities, governments and economic regions. Her work has been featured by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker along with features in The Economist, Forbes, CIO, Wired, WSJ and many other outlets. She is the recipient of numerous awards for innovation during her career. Presently she is partnering with Peters to apply her algorithms in wallet79. Currently, she is teaching at the School of Management (SOM) at Yale University and the Erasmus Center for Women and Organizations (ECWO) at the Rotterdam School of Management.