Karen Risa Robbins is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and business consultant with deep experience in collaboration and change initiatives. Founder and CEO of the AmTech Center for Collaboration in Silicon Valley, she led a team that won accolades for orchestrating public-private partnerships and change initiatives for top-tier government, industry, and academic clients.

Her personal credits include leading governance and partner relations for the $18 Billion dollar NextGen Air Traffic Control Modernization initiative, and brokering the $150 million dollar NASA project that spawned the Predator drone.

A legal innovator, she was the policy and legal architect of an unprecedented federal contracting model that enables public-private ventures. She negotiated large dollar R&D deals and initiated numerous industry alliances and nonprofit organizations.

She presently serves on the Board of Advisors for the Doug Engelbart Institute (celebrated computer/internet pioneer) and as advisor to the California Department of Water Resources on the use of drones for precision agriculture. Today she applies her extensive knowledge of collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and organizational structures, to further public policy enterprises.