Expert: Karen Pascoe

As Senior VP of User Experience at MasterCard, Karen Pascoe is living the UX dream. She came to the company a year ago and was tasked with creating fantastic user experiences for merchants, customers, and banks. What has made her job so enviable is that everyone at MasterCard understands how critical customer experience is to the company’s success. Karen’s team is currently working on new payment systems. Coming from PayPal and JP Morgan Chase, Karen has a wealth of experience in moving money—or its electronic representation—from one account to another. The challenge is figuring out which parts of a complicated, virtual financial system can be tweaked and simplified without compromising security and reliability.