Karen Hough is the founder and CEO of ImprovEdge. She has been using improvisation as a catalyst for business training and consulting for more than 17 years. A professional improviser and actor for 25 years, Karen has performed in more than 100 live productions with the Second City of Chicago, Metraform/Annoyance Theatre, the Organic Theatre, the Purple Crayon of Yale, and many others. Her TV and radio credits include CBS, Miller, Earthshare, Eli Lilly, and S.C. Johnson.
While working as a senior sales executive in the network engineering industry in New York and Chicago, Karen originated and expanded the sales and management efforts of three separate technology startups, launched partner programs, and assisted in East Coast and national expansions. She founded her company, ImprovEdge, with the goal to bring the skills of improvisation—the ability to think on your feet, arrive at solutions through the side door, and communicate in ways that bring people together—to businesses to drive innovation and success. In 2012, ImprovEdge won the silver International Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year.
Karen was recognized in 2016 as an Inspiring Woman by the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, and was also a recipient of the Athena PowerLink Award for outstanding woman-owned business and named a semifinalist in TechColumbus’ Innovation Awards 2011 for Outstanding Service.
Her book, The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work (Berrett-Kohler, 2011), was a number 1 Amazon bestseller in category and an 800CEORead Top 25 Business Book. Her second book, Be the Best Bad Presenter Ever: Break the Rules, Make Mistakes, and Win Them Over (Berrett-Kohler, 2014), won the Benjamin Franklin Gold Award and has been translated into four languages. She is the creator/author of the Yes! Deck, Managing Tough Conversations: The Everyday Coaching Model. Karen is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and has been featured in Inc magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, TD magazine, Mashable.com, and BusinessInsider.com.
A graduate of Yale University and La Sorbonne, Paris IV, Karen is a Certified Speaking Professional and an international conference keynote speaker on topics such as negotiation, women’s issues, innovation, diversity, leadership, executive presence, managing tough conversations, and presentation skills.
Karen is deeply committed to volunteer activities and philanthropy. Her volunteer activities include teaching improv classes for high school students in rural Kansas and confidence-building workshops for children in Chicago’s inner city. She resides in Columbus with her husband and three children.