Kathryn Petralia is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder and COO of Kabbage.[1]
In November 2017, she was assessed by Forbes as being the 98th most powerful woman in the world.[2] In December 2017, she was listed in a TechCrunch feature on 42 women succeeding in tech that year.[3]
Kathryn Petralia was born on 17 August 1970.[4] At age nine, she was given a TRS-80 computer by her parents, and developed an interest in technology.[5] She was an English major[5] and earned a B.A. in English literature from Furman University.
Starting in the early 1990s, she began working at companies focused on "technology, payments and e-commerce." She became involved in "alternative lending" in the late 1990s. She also launched a west coast commerce startup in the mid-1990s.[5] Early on she was involved with US Web. She was director of strategy for Visionary Systems. Early on, she was a vice president and co-founder of WorthKnowing.com, which was later sold to CompuCredit and TransUnion. Afterwards, she spent seven years in corporate development with CompuCredit, As a corporate development executive with CompuCredit Corporation (now Atlanticus),[5] she was in charge of "entering new markets" and developing products.[5]
She was afterwards the vice president of strategy for Revolution Money[5] in St. Petersburg, Florida.[6]
In 2008,[7] [8] she co-founded Kabbage along with Marc Gorlin and Rob Frohwein.[9] The business opened for business in May 2011.[7] In 2015, the Kabbage platform was extended to large banks such as Santander.[7] She continues to serve as Kabbage's head of operations and has also served as its chief operating officer.[10]
She and her husband[11] have two children, and live in Atlanta, Georgia.[1]