As chief financial officer, Karen Rapp is responsible for driving operational excellence to implement long-term business strategies and ensuring success within the global finance and information technology organizations.
Rapp has almost 30 years of experience in the technology industry. Prior to joining NI, she served as senior vice president of corporate development at NXP Semiconductor, where she led the integration efforts for the NXP/Freescale Semiconductor merger and the divestiture of the standard products business.
Prior to her role at NXP, Rapp served as the vice president and chief information officer at Freescale Semiconductor. She managed the worldwide IT strategy, development, and infrastructure, with a focus on business outcomes and efficient and effective business processes. In her time at Freescale, Rapp was instrumental in leading the balance sheet separation from Motorola for the initial IPO and creating the new Freescale fiduciary processes. These processes aligned sales coverage with growth opportunities in emerging markets such as China and delivered cost savings through operational transformations. In addition, she led a team to create a new product introduction prioritization process to impact revenue growth and helped design a low-cost engineering strategy to optimize R&D costs.
Rapp held a variety of positions while at Motorola/Freescale in corporate accounting, supply chain, sales, and marketing. She has shown success in fostering new ways of thinking to drive customer value, including the establishment of processes, systems, and cultures that reduce business risk and improve customer experiences.
Rapp served as president of the board of directors for the NXP Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting STEM education programs. She is a member of the Business Alliance Council for the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) and is a Certified Treasury Professional. Rapp earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Northern Illinois University and a master’s degree from The University of Texas at Austin.
