Yahoo! Canada Luncheon: Speaker Bios
 Kristy Cook
Director of Product at Yahoo! Canada
Kristy is the Director of Product for Yahoo! Canada. In this dynamic role she enthusiastically manages the team that keeps one of the world’s leading sites and services running 365 days a year. Yahoo isn’t just her company, it’s her attitude. She actively manages a variety of key teams: the media team, network services team and the content business development team.
Since the beginning, Kristy’s career has been centred on a passion for learning and product and service development/launches. Kristy feels enthusiasm and a real understanding of client needs is key to anyone’s success. Prior to her role at Yahoo! Kristy thrived in the bustling telcom business at Bell Canada. Her last role with them was managing the competitive Wireless Service Development team. This was a role that saw Kristy’s time at Bell come full circle, having started with the Bell Mobility team for the initial launch of wireless data in 1999. This undertaking evolved into a position on the exciting Bell Convergence team under Jean Monty. Here Kristy and her creative team developed the scope for small and medium business services. This enterprise laid the path for Kristy to run the Business ISP team at Bell for close to three years. Kristy left Bell with a deep understanding of product launches as well as the business operations including managing a category P&L.
Fresh off the University bus, Kristy started her career launching large scale events and programs with stints at the University of Toronto, Edelman Public Relations, The Bloor-Yorkville BIA and with her own company where she worked with clients such as Random House, Toronto Life, Motorsport Hall of Fame and many others. Running her own shop pushed Kristy to really appreciate what it takes to make things happen: hard work, passion and defined objectives matched with keen knowledge and the ability to learn from all your experiences. Her moto is "bring it on – let’s make something happen."
When Kristy isn’t hollering Yahoo!, she can be found picking up bronze medals in triathlons or looking for the perfect wave.
 Karen Bennett
Director of Engineering at Yahoo! Canada
Karen has extensive experience in the software development area academically (with degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics and Project Management from Queen’s University and University of Toronto) as well as in the area of development and management. She initially started her career at IBM as a programmer in the development tools and database areas. She moved into management and has launched a wide range of products including e-business, WebSphere and Java applications, development tools for AIX, 370, AS400 and with DB2 database.
Karen later became Director of Research at IBM Canada where a key component of her role involved technology transfer from many of the North America universities and Centres of Excellence to the IBM development teams. She sat on the MIT Media Lab board for several years. Karen was named the first Canadian Women in Technology to help support the IBM CEO and staff on assessing the Open Source and Linux technologies. She decided to try her hand at a start-up company and joined Cygnus Solutions who did embedded programming work for such companies as Intel, Sony, Oracle, Hitachi, Fujitsu and IBM on Linux. She was involved in developing a software simulation model for the Sony Playstation 2 system before the actual hardware was manufactured. This project enabled Sony to bring the PS2 product line to production 18 months ahead of schedule. Cygnus Solutions was acquired by Red Hat and Karen transitioned into VP, Engineering for Linux working out of the HQ Engineering office in Boston, MA. She managed multi-disciplinary teams of engineers in Europe, South East Asia, Japan, Australia, US and Canada. She learned first hand how to do open collaborative development with the different communities, make revenue from free code and work with partners. Her husband’s career change required her to return to Toronto with her husband, two children, one dog and three cats, and she moved to Yahoo! Canada to manage their Canadian Engineering group.
Karen is currently on the Canadian Research Council, is a board member of three Canadian start-up businesses as well as BEA Systems. She consults with Venture Capital companies like NorthBridge and IBM and is in the process of getting a Tim Hortons franchise. She enjoys playing on a women’s soccer league, being member of the Toronto squash team and driving her children to their multiple activities.
About Yahoo! Canada
Yahoo! Canada Co. is a leading Internet destination that provides online products and services to
meet the needs of Canadians and offers a range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to
connect with Internet users. Yahoo! Canada services Canadians in both English and in French through
its sites, www.yahoo.ca & www.yahoo.qc.ca. Yahoo! Canada is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.
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