Karen LeVert is the Managing Partner for LeVert Ventures. As a first-time fund manager, she partnered with 28-year-old, top-quartile performing Pappas Capital to handle the back office for the fund. LeVert Ventures invests in early-stage AgTech companies. She has a proven track record of progressing early-stage technologies from university research labs to commercialization as co-founder and CEO of two innovation labs, Southeast TechInventures, Inc. (STI) and Ag TechInventures, LLC (AgTI). Karen’s business experience encompasses both corporate and entrepreneurial worlds with over 25 years of successful leadership experience in executive management, start-ups and technology commercialization.

Karen started her career at a Fortune-500 insurance company holding positions of increasing responsibility from programmer and controller to general manager of a 500-person property and casualty service center. Before founding the innovation labs, her first entrepreneurial venture was launching a franchise bioremediation company that she later sold. Her next entrepreneurial venture was co-founding a Silicon Valley-based software company. Karen is the recipient of multiple awards including the Council for Entrepreneurial Development’s Outstanding Service Award, induction into the WRAL TechWire Hall of Fame and the 2022 Women in Agribusiness (WIA) Demeter Award of Excellence.

Along with her professional duties, Karen serves as a board member for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, the North Carolina Arboretum, AgLaunch, North Carolina State Agriculture and Life Science Foundation and LCBA Life Insurance Company. She has an MBA from the University of Dayton and a BBA in Information Technology from Eastern Michigan University.