Katica Roy is an award-winning gender economist, former Global 500 global executive, programmer, data scientist, and the CEO and founder of an award-winning SaaS company, Pipeline. CNN, MSNBC, ABC,CBS, Bloomberg, Fox News, Cheddar, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, Wharton Business, Newsy, and NBC have sought Katica for her sharp and unconventional take on the day’s headlines.
Katica broke the story in her MSNBC byline that 300,000 Black women left the U.S. labor force in just three months — a piece that went viral, shared by Secretary Hillary Clinton, Senator Raphael Warnock, and other national advocates. That analysis sparked a wave of coverage across ABC News, NBC Washington, NBC Atlanta, Fox LA, Fox Philadelphia, CNN, Essence, Ebony, Forbes, The King Center, and Bernice King. Her insights were subsequently featured on the front page of the Sunday And Monday New York Times, and have since been cited or commissioned by S&P Global, The Boston Globe, HR Brew, and numerous other outlets.
She has interviewed former President Biden, former Vice President Harris, Senators Booker and Gillibrand, former Secretary Pete, Canadian Pay Equity Commissioner Karen Jensen, Sophia Bush, Eve Rodsky, Gretchen Carlson, and Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings.
She has spoken on over 100 of the top stages across the world, including major stages at SXSW, CES, Web Summit, and for major corporations such as BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, P&G, Cisco, Google, and Microsoft.
Her high-octane, visionary articles have been published by the World Economic Forum, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Katie Couric Media, Entrepreneur, The Hill, The Advocate, Harvard Business Review, and Morning Consult. Her articles have garnered over 2.9 billion impressions.
Katica is the flagship expert columnist for Equity Observer, a new vertical from Design Observer led by Editor-in-Chief Ellen McGirt, the former Fortune editor and creator of the award-winning RaceAhead newsletter. Her biweekly column, Equity by Design™, explores how equity must be intentionally built into the foundations of business, technology, policy, and the economy.
Katica’s work has been cited by multiple New York Times bestselling authors across more than 10 books. Her research has also been cited in multiple U.S. congressional publications and proceedings, and she serves as a resource to policymakers.
In 2017 Katica was named a Luminary by the Colorado Technology Association; in 2018 a Colorado Governors' Fellow; in 2019 a Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business and awarded the Stevie Entrepreneur of the Year—Gold Award; in 2020 she was named the Colorado Entrepreneur of the Year; in 2022 a LinkedIn Top Influencer for gender equity. She is a member of Fast Company’s Impact Council, Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum, The Aspen Institute's Tech Accountability Coalition, and a former member of the US Small Business Administration’s National Women’s Business Council (where she advises the President, Congress, and the SBA on funding female entrepreneurs—including oversight of the $34 billion in federal contracting set-asides earmarked each year for female founders).
Pipeline uses advanced technology to make intersectional gender parity a reality in our lifetime. Under Katica’s leadership, Pipeline created the first gender equity app on Salesforce’s AppExchange and was named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2019. The company has also been recognized on Fast Company’s lists 2020 and 2023 World’s Most Innovative Companies, 2021 Next Big Things in Tech, and 2022 World Changing Ideas. In recognition of Pipeline’s groundbreaking work to close the gender equity gap, Governor John Hickenlooper officially declared April 10 “Equity for All® Day” in the State of Colorado.
Katica’s passion for equity is deeply personal. She is the daughter of an immigrant and a refugee, plus a proud, breadwinner mother raising a teenage daughter and son. Nearly 60 years to the day after her father and sisters climbed the stairs of Air Force One to freedom—thanks to the humanitarian intervention of President Eisenhower—Katica received a letter from another U.S. President, Barack Obama, thanking her for standing up and speaking out. It was a full-circle moment that underscored the generational impact of her work.