Karen Kahn, vice president of Sun Microsystem's worldwide public relations organization, leads all of the public relations efforts for the company to deliver the corporate message and vision, demonstrate thought leadership, and strengthen Sun's reputation in the market.

Her responsibilities include executive communications, corporate/strategic PR, financial and crisis communications, product and services PR, product reviews and Sun's international media relations program. Kahn also leads the communication programs around Sun's strategic partnerships and acquisition strategy.

She has been instrumental in several recent strategic efforts, including the overall global media relations programs for product launches, the Sun/Microsoft communication strategy and event, the Sun/Google announcement and the Sun/Oracle joint media program. She led the communication and messaging strategy around Sun's recent acquisitions of StorageTek, SeeBeyond and Tarentella, and defined and simplified the PR/AR agency model, resulting in company savings.

Kahn's skills are around leading large cross-functional teams, synthesizing corporate messages, driving for measurable results and creating innovative ideas to get Sun's key messages into the marketplace. She is also focused on helping Sun participate in and lead the industry's top conversations.

Kahn has been at Sun since 2003 during which time she directed the software PR team and the brand PR team. She brings nearly 20 years of agency, corporate and journalism experience to Sun.

She served as a tech practice leader and SVP at two of the industry's largest PR shops — Fleishman-Hillard and Weber Shandwick. She also worked as a writer for the Wall Street Journal Inc. magazine and Frontline on PBS. She has a master's in business administration from Boston University.