Karina Sotnik

Karina was born in Riga, Latvia and moved to San Francisco in 1988. She is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, adviser, and educator. She spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley in senior positions helping companies grow globally. She also launched three ventures of her own, including WorldUpstart, a consulting practice focused on providing mentorship and advice on best innovation practices to institutions around the world and helping international companies enter US market. In addition, she worked as a Digital Enterprise Portfolio Manager at the University of Pennsylvania PCI Ventures where she managed a portfolio of 19 companies and launched and ran AppItUP, a digital accelerator for mobile apps. She is now a Director of Business Incubation and Accelerator Programs at the University City Science Center where she’s developing and strengthening incubation and commercialization programs for startups and entrepreneurs across the business lifecycle. . She frequently gives seminars and webinars on a range of topics that may be helpful to startups including "Pretotyping," based on the work of Alberto Savoia and Jeremy Clarke.  In addition, her translations of Russian poetry has been published in World Literature Today and Common Knowledge, as well as other publications.