Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Karen Lee
Senior Director, Saberpoint
New York, NY
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
Head of Salesforce Practice at Saberpoint. I am responsible for presales activities, implementing solutions, recruiting, training, and partnering with vendors to meet clients’ delivery needs and scalability.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
My clients. I truly enjoy the industry of small to medium businesses and how I can service that sector with my technology and data expertise. It's challenging and fun to work in this sector in evaluating a full technical stack and identifying the solutions that meet the business needs, budget and scalability.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
My CEO, my team, my daughter, my friends - They always remind me how much brighter things truly are.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Never Fear.
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity is generosity of the heart. Empathy and action oriented care for society as a whole.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Businesses can play a strong impacting role. I think many have already and can definitely do more. Every person can also contribute in many ways that will help in the overall cause for betterment of society. Businesses can better support monetarily than an individual can, but individuals can share time, ideas and empathy which is the action. We need both of these to be complementary.
Saberpoint as an organization that supports many causes monetarily. I will progress with a series of actions as an individual and/or team to push forward these causes.
- I volunteer as an adjunct professor at Pace University to mentor and teach the younger generation.
- I am an advocate of inclusion by supporting young women and minority group in their path to career success.
- My team and I volunteer for non profit project with organizations such as taproot.org or catchafire.org
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Nice. I know, it sounds bland. When I have year-end reviews since I started my career, my feedback from all my managers is "You are too nice." They made it seem like it was a negative, but I was who I was and I didn't know how to change that. As I matured and learned to embrace this feedback, my response back is "I got here because of my personality and there is no such thing as too nice."
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
This is a funny question, "Work from Home" by Fifth Harmony
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
My goal every year is the same. Maximize my learning to be used to assist others.
