Karen Roter Davis ’94

Karen Roter Davis is part of the leadership team at X and works on early stage projects, helping moonshot technologies make the transition to successful businesses. She returned to Alphabet after Google’s 2016 acquisition of Urban Engines, a movement analytics startup, where she was hired as the general manager. Prior to Urban Engines, Karen served as the managing director of GE Ventures, Software & Analytics, where she kick-started partnerships, acquisition and investment strategies to advance GE’s industrial internet capabilities across its multi-billion dollar industrial businesses. Before GE, Roter Davis n held interim leadership roles at several startups, facilitating strategy, growth and key hires. Previously, as a Google executive from 2003-2008, she led internal operations for the company’s IPO, and worked with Google leadership, technical and operational teams on early-stage incubation and exploratory efforts from inception to scale. She holds an MBA/JD from Northwestern University. She is an Industrial Advisor to EQT, a Stockholm-based global private equity firm and serves on the Board of Innovyze, a leading global wet infrastructure software solutions provider. Karen is also an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University, where she’s teaching ‘Business of Innovation’ this fall. Originally from New York, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two daughters, and their cat and two dogs.