Kristen Connor built a 20-year career in the technology industry — including executive roles at three venture-backed startups with successful exits — before bringing that experience to her coaching practice. She has been in the rooms where the hardest decisions get made: navigating board dynamics, managing investor relationships, building and aligning leadership teams, and finding the path forward when it isn't obvious.

That pattern recognition is what she brings to every coaching engagement.

Her approach is rooted in Design Thinking — a methodology that demands a complete understanding of the problem from every relevant perspective before attempting to solve it. As a product and design leader, Kristen applied this discipline to building products that met real business and user needs. As a coach, she applies it to the human and organizational challenges her clients face: helping them see the whole board, understand what a win looks like for every key stakeholder, and act with the clarity and conviction that comes from having a complete picture.

Earlier in her career, Kristen led large multidisciplinary design teams delivering enterprise solutions for some of the world's most recognized organizations. That experience gave her a working fluency in complex enterprise systems and the relationship dynamics that come with them — directly relevant to clients who build products for, sell into, or navigate partnerships with large organizations.

Her clients are founders and senior executives operating in complex environments — building venture-backed companies, managing PE-backed transitions, leading inside organizations where trust and influence determine outcomes. What they have in common is not their industry or their title, but their commitment to driving successful outcomes.

Kristen is a co-founder of Pracademic Coaching, where her operating experience is paired with her partner Lauren Rigney's deep academic grounding in psychology and human motivation. Together they bring a genuinely uncommon combination: the practical and the rigorous, in equal measure. 

Past startup experience

• Chief Experience Officer — Better.com (NASDAQ: BETR)

• VP of Product & Design — Animoto (acquired by Redbrick)

• VP of User Experience — Yodle (acquired by Web.com)

Selected enterprise clients

• CVS/pharmacy

• L.L.Bean

• Morgan Stanley

• Staples

• Verizon