Karen Dillon

Editorial Director

Karen Dillon is the Editorial Director of BanyanGlobal, helping Banyan share its expertise and ideas with family businesses around the world. Karen was drawn to Banyan because she’s fascinated by the unique dynamics, challenges, and personal stories of family businesses. Understanding that dynamic through her work with Banyan offered Karen the chance to tap into all of her previous professional experiences, both as an editor and a writer and story teller.

The former editor of Harvard Business Review magazine, Karen is the author of New York Times best-seller How Will You Measure Your Life?, which she wrote with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, as well as Wall Street Journal business best-seller Competing Against Luck: the Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, also with Clayton Christensen. She’s also the author of The Harvard Business Review Guide to Office Politics.

Before her years at HBR, she previously served as deputy editor of Inc magazine and was editor and publisher of the critically-acclaimed American Lawyer magazine and London-based Legal Business. A graduate of Cornell University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she was named by Ashoka as one of the world’s most influential and inspiring women. She is currently a contributing editor to Harvard Business Review.

Karen lives outside of Boston with her husband and two daughters. She loves old school movie theatres, traveling, and collecting new experiences. Karen and her brother and sister are the reigning champions of Lynnfield, Massachusetts’s 80s Trivia Challenge – a title that was retired after they swept the board. She also swears she’ll eventually get around to writing that screenplay or murder mystery series she’s been developing in her mind for years.