Karen Wickre

Karen Wickre is a veteran connector, editor, and communicator with deep roots in Silicon Valley. She has worked in and around the tech industry long enough to have appeared in WIRED 1.4 and even authored one of the earliest guides to what was once called “the World Wide Web”—now a nostalgic relic of a more innocent digital era.

As a corporate writer, Wickre has shaped narratives, styles, and communication strategies for major companies such as Google, Twitter, and numerous startups. An early Googler, she joined the company when it had just 500 employees and remained for nine years as it expanded to a workforce of 50,000. During her tenure, she played a pivotal role in crisis communications, crafting posts on product launches, corporate pivots, organizational shakeups, and company culture. More recently, she has advised a range of companies on messaging strategies, content development, and communications frameworks, offering both strategic guidance and reality checks.

Often introduced as someone who “knows everybody,” Wickre modestly acknowledges that while this isn’t strictly true, she does know who everyone is. Her true strengths lie in her ability to anticipate trends, ask the right questions, and help teams, companies, and individuals navigate their next steps. She detailed her long-standing passion for fostering meaningful connections in her 2018 book, Taking the Work Out of Networking: Your Guide to Making and Keeping Great Connections (Simon & Schuster).

Wickre’s areas of expertise span business communications, corporate social media strategy, change management, and company culture. She is also a strong advocate for journalism and serves on the boards of The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford and the News Literacy Project. Additionally, she co-founded Newsgeist, an annual unconference that brings together journalists, technologists, and media professionals to discuss the future of news.

Outside of her professional work, Wickre is an avid art collector (despite running out of wall space), a lover of dark UK crime series, an enthusiastic curator of Spotify playlists, and a devoted fan of pie. She holds onto both slide carousels and terabytes of digital media, making her a proud “modern elder” in the ever-evolving digital landscape.