Dr. Karen Meidlinger is a Founder and Managing Principal of Meidlinger Partners, LLC. Meidlinger Partners invests in, grows and develops water technology, product and service companies that have scalable solutions to clean water and wastewater in an energy efficient manner while meeting governmental standards.

Prior to co-founding Meidlinger Partners in 2008, 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. At Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Meidlinger helped set up a seed stage investment platform to allow the company to gain access to new technologies that could benefit J&J operating divisions. She also created a program to inventory, organize, package and sell non-progressing assets in the medical device and consumer sectors.

Prior to her work at Johnson & Johnson, Karen ran the life science business incubator at the University City Science Center. In this role, she identified high-growth, technology-based life science companies and then negotiated space, service and equity agreements with these companies. She also spent considerable time advising these companies on strategy and helping them reach their business milestones. She advised over 100 start-up companies, including several biotech companies that went from start up to exit, turning $432 million of VC investment into $1.2 billion.

Karen 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. Among other things, she is a professional SCUBA diver who has SCUBA-dived under ice in Antarctica.