Karen L. Webster is a business strategist, marketing expert, and entrepreneur.  She is one of the foremost experts in the world on payments, and connected commerce, a widely followed author, and sought after keynote speaker. Karen has worked closely with the most innovative established players in the payments, financial services, mobile, B2B, digital media and technology sectors to identify, ignite and monetize innovation. She has also served as an advisor to numerous startups, most of which have made highly successful exits.  Karen co-founded PYMNTS.com, the leading global information and data analytics platform concerning payments and commerce, in 2009 and serves as its CEO. Karen has a long history of consulting, having served as the Managing Director of Global Marketing and Planning for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ US$6 billion management consulting practice and as COO for a US$200 million consulting subsidiary that is part of the MMC family of companies. She was an adjunct faculty member at her alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, where she holds a Masters’ Degree in Marketing and developed and taught graduate level courses on business-to-business marketing.