Kate Lawrence has held management positions at Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, and a number of venture capital-backed start-ups. Her background spans patented research and development, manufacturing, engineering, sales, marketing, finance, and strategic planning.

Kate holds a double-major undergraduate degree in Chemistry and History from the University of Washington, where she also did Masters Degree work in the History Department and the Far Eastern and Slavic Institute. Her post-baccalaureate academic studies have been in applied mathematics and life sciences. She holds an MBA from Harvard University, specializing in Technology Management and New Ventures.

Starting at E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Inc. (DuPont) as a wet-bench chemist, she worked as a shift-supervisor on a round-the-clock manufacturing line before moving into process engineering and instrumentation. Subsequently she was promoted into research and development at DuPont's Potomac River Development Laboratory in the Formulation Section. Part of her duties included working in Technology Transfer & Licensing.

She left DuPont to attend graduate school. She returned to industry joining Hewlett-Packard (HP) where she evaluated Advanced Manufacturing Technology. At HP, she again moved to the research laboratory conducting original, peer-reviewed, research into high polymers and boundary-phase phenomenon. She was awarded a patent for a biomedical gel based on these findings.

Leveraging her scientific expertise, she enjoyed a series of promotions from Product Manager to Director of Product Marketing and then to Vice President for Sales and Marketing. She has worked in new product development and launch.

She worked on exit strategies for several firms backed by venture capital (VC) funds including Hambrecht & Qwist, Alan Patricof, 3i's, and Charles River, as well as the investment bank (IB) Castle Harlan.

Prior of joining pingVision she had a successful career in Mergers & Acquisitions, Patents, Technology and Licensing where she consulted for the Japanese firm, Kaneka.

She became involved in the Internet, still ARPANET at the time, in 1980 and has been passionate about its potential since the 1970's. She continues to study cybernetics--the man-machine interface--and the mathematics of causality.