Kara Kapczynski
Chief Technology Officer, Senior Vice President
Gen3 Partners
Kara Kapczynski is the chief technology officer, senior vice president, for
Gen3 Partners. In her current position, Kapczynski works on the technical
architectures that support a variety of businesses, manages a team of senior
technical architects, and provides technology thought leadership for the
firm.
Prior to Gen3 Partners, Kapczynski was vice president, chief technologist North
America for Cambridge Technology Partners. Kapczynski was employed at CTP from
1997-1999, and during that time she established and grew a senior technology
organization for the firm that was a multi-million dollar "architecture"
practice.
Kapczynski herself works specifically on projects involving technology strategy
and the implementation of emerging technologies. During the fall of 1999,
she was the chief architect on the company's most sophisticated
project - the design of a web-based infrastructure to support the deployment
of any interactive application, approximately 120 Internet related
"concepts," for one of the ten largest financial institutions in the world.
During 1999 she spoke at JavaOne (San Francisco, June) and at Women in
Technology International (San Jose, June and Boston, September). This year, she spoke at
Interactive Newspapers 2000 in February. She is also a technical
contributor and technical book reviewer for Addison Wesley. Kapczynski and her
team also author the monthly column, IT Architect, for the SunWorld
publication.
Kapczynski has 15 years of experience in the computer industry.
Previously, she was a director, Distributed Computing Consulting
Services at the Gartner Group, a senior project manager and technical
architect at MCI/SHL Systemhouse and a manager for the National Center for
Technology Enablement at Ernst & Young. Also, she was involved with software
development and systems management activities at IBM and Digital Equipment
and did development at two start-up software/hardware companies in the
1980's.
Kapczynski received her bachelor's degree in computer science from the
University of California, Berkeley. She received her master's degree in
business administration in a night time program from California State
University, Northridge. She has also done graduate work at the
Vrije University Brussel in Brussels, Belgium.
Kara Kapczynski answers these questions:
1. What was your first job in technology?
2. Who has been your most significant mentor? Why?
3. What has been your greatest challenge and what strategies
did you use to overcome obstacles?
4. Who has been the most influential person in your life?
Why?
5. What lessons have you learned that would be valuable to
women beginning their careers in technology?
6. What new technology do you believe will have the most positive
impact on the world in the next 20 years? The most negative impact?
On the lighter side:
1. If you could have dinner with any 2 people (living or not),
who would they be?
2. What was the last book you read? What books do you love to recommend?
3. If you couldn't do what you are doing now, what profession would you choose?
4. What is your definition of success?
