Kristian Kimbro Rickard is the founder and CEO of Doyenne360, a social-impact technology company. With a track record for designing, building, and rapidly deploying AI, analytics, and workforce collaboration and training solutions, Doyenne360, and its AI-powered STEM workforce development platform called STEMNXT, serve organizations in industries such as education, oil and gas, and retail.
Kristian has more than two decades of experience in technology, starting her career after graduating from Texas Tech University with a Master's in Technical Communication, specializing in online design and development. Beginning as a software developer at a Big Five management consulting firm, she advanced into technical leadership roles in consulting, spent five years at Microsoft headquarters honing her business, finance, and product management skills to add to her technical expertise portfolio, and launched her first startup, MAX451, in 2011.
Kristian has received numerous accolades as a technologist and an entrepreneur: she has been listed as one of the top ten female entrepreneurs to watch by the Global Accelerator Network (GAN), and her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including CIO Magazine, Retail TouchPoints, Information Week, and Microsoft advanced analytics customer case studies.
Kristian enjoys traveling internationally to speak about technology and the importance of increasing diversity and inclusion within the technology field. Passionate about seeing more women and people of color in technical leadership roles, you can often find Kristian in schools within her community, volunteering her time to teach middle and high-school students how to assemble robots, how to code, or how to make a flashing dance-party bracelet with some duct tape, LED lights, and a little knowledge about how to create circuits.