Karen Meidlinger

Dr. Karen Meidlinger is the director of partnerships at the Center for Clean Hydrogen, University of Delaware, where she is responsible for external corporate engagement. Prior to joining the University of Delaware, Dr. Meidlinger led the digital innovation team at Evoqua Water Technologies which created the award winning SophisTM Digital Services. Before Evoqua, she worked at a Comcast Corporation’s spin-up company MachineQ where she was director of new business ventures IoT. Prior to Comcast, she was a cofounder and managing principal of Meidlinger Partners which invested in, grew, and developed water technology, product, and service companies with scalable solutions to address water and wastewater issues. Prior to co-founding Meidlinger Partners, Dr. Meidlinger was an associate at Johnson & Johnson where she spent almost four years leading innovation management projects, identifying new technologies that would drive future business growth for the corporation. Prior to her work at Johnson & Johnson, she ran the life science business incubator at the University City Science Center. She advised over 100 startup companies, including several biotech companies that went from startup to exit, turning $432 million of VC investment into $1.2 billion.

Dr. Meidlinger earned her M.B.A. at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She completed her Ph.D. in marine ecology at the University of Southampton (UK) and her B.Sc. in marine biology at the University of Liverpool (UK). She also completed an entrepreneurship fellowship at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She grew up in Eswatini, Southern Africa and now resides in the United States in Philadelphia.