TheBridge profile: Karen Silverman
Name: Karen Silverman
Current city: San Francisco, CA
Current job: Startup Founder/Principal (coming spring 2020)
Past job: Partner at Latham Watkins
Q. Favorite spot for a coffee meeting: Cafe Reverie or Ferry Building
Q. Describe how a skill you learned in a previous job helped you in your current job. As a veteran legal/business advisor, I learned to listen wholly and in context to discover the real, often underlying issue at hand.
Q. Job advice in three words? Integrity beats perfection
Q. How are you (or your company, org, nonprofit) currently bridging the gap between innovation and regulation? These issues are the core purpose for the new business - to help senior leaders understand the technologies they are deploying in terms of their own risk oversight and management duties, and then to help them govern in keeping with their innovation/strategic objectives and within risk tolerances.
Q. What can innovators learn from policymakers? To take a breath and think deeply about the impact (intended and unintended) of their innovations.
Q. What can policymakers learn from innovators? To think creatively in ways that enable positive change.
Q. Favorite book/podcast/long-form article you recommend? In the Garden of Beasts / Life 3.0 / How I Built This / RadioLab
Q. Everyday is probably different, but can you describe a "day in the life" of your job? In formation! But the goal includes reading, writing and exercise and playing with my dogs, in addition to fielding email...
Q. Why are you part of TheBridge community? Or, why do you think it's important this community exists for tech, policy and political professionals? I firmly believe that the challenges confronting us today (immediate and longterm) will require the collective wisdom across areas of expertise. Tech ethics, climate change, all of it will require the scientists, ethicists, philosophers, artists, coaches, lawyers and politicians all to share what they know, to be generous and to be patient. We will all need to learn as quickly as we've ever learned, and what better way than to break down silos?
Q. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself in the beginning of your career? Learn from everyone (even if it's what not to do); develop your voice and pick your moments; never forget your agency; find and invest in integrity and protect those who practice it.
Q. What's one piece of advice you are still trying to master? Patience.
Q. Most underrated virtue in an employee? Willingness to speak up when something doesn't seem right, and do it in a way the room will hear.
Q. How often do you work from home? More and more... :-) Stay well everyone!
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