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| Karen Hobbs ’03, at left, was the keynote speaker and a panelist at the Women, Work, and AI: Preparing for the Next Workforce Shift event in April 2026 at Nazareth. Also shown: Panelist Lawana Jones ’88 (center) and moderator Jeffrey Allan, director of Nazareth’s Institute for Responsible Technology. |
As a child, Karen (Sharp) Hobbs ’03 thought she’d become an attorney. A fan of math, she was drawn to the idea that decisions could be grounded in data and facts. What she didn’t know, until the final stretch of her time at Nazareth, was that she’d find all of that — and more — in a role she never expected.
She majored in business administration at Nazareth and loved her marketing classes. One of her Nazareth classmates raved about an internship experience at Butler/Till, a Rochester-based marketing and media agency. Hobbs jumped at that opportunity her senior year. “I fell in love with it,” she says of doing media buying. “It had a lot to do with data and numbers and critical thinking. I just thought, ‘I am home.’ ”
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| Hobbs (lower right, wearing sandals) posing with Nazareth classmates and Professor Jerry Zappia (at far left) in 2003, during college. |
Hobbs was hired at Butler/Till full-time before she graduated. And 23 years later, she’s still there. Now senior vice president of operations at Butler/Till, Hobbs has come far from her first desk as an unpaid intern “working my tail off” placing ads on TV and radio. Her path has wound through media planning, account service, and a half dozen other roles before converging on something harder to capture on a business card — building and leading the operational infrastructure that allows an entire organization to perform at its best.
Operations, as Hobbs describes it, is less about doing the work than about creating the conditions for it — making sure the people, processes, and technology are in place for everyone else to do their best. Her days are spent auditing, diagnosing, and designing: Is there a gap? What’s causing it? Is this a people problem, a process problem, or a technology problem? How do we build something that actually changes the system, not just covers the symptom?
"It's a constant iteration of our own business," she says. Last year, that included navigating a significant IT infrastructure transition — moving the company to a new managed service provider. This year, the focus shifted to artificial intelligence: exploring the right tools, rolling them out across the enterprise, and driving real adoption at every level.
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| Hobbs with son Emerson, age 7. |
On a Tuesday in March, her boss asked her for data on the tool’s usage and return on investment. It was nearing the end of the work day and she would soon need to pick up her son. With the help of the AI tool, in 51 minutes she created an executive dashboard with adoption rates, usage trends, month-over-month growth analysis, and areas of opportunity. “I probably provided him more than he actually needed or expected.” She told that story on campus in April 2026 as the keynote speaker and a panelist for Women, Work, and AI: Preparing for the Next Workforce Shift (watch video recording), an event open to the public.
Hobbs honed those instincts — preparedness and initiative — in her marketing classes at Nazareth and points to Professor Jerry Zappia as a defining influence. “He had this expertise, but he also was so invested in his students and the craft and discipline of marketing,” she says. "I always felt both supported and challenged — and it was that standard for quality that became the internal bar I've carried with me throughout my entire career."
The community at Nazareth left a mark, too. Hobbs didn’t live on campus her first two years and wasn’t an athlete, so she found her footing differently than many classmates — but she found a sense of belonging.
"The connections I made were genuine and lasting — there was a real sense of belonging, a feeling that no matter what, someone would always be there to catch you."
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| Hobbs with stepson Noah, husband Torrey Hobbs ’04, and son Emerson in January 2025 at the Bahamas Bowl, where Noah’s college football team (University at Buffalo) competed and won. |
For students now entering the workforce, her advice is direct: Hard work pays off. “Don’t underestimate the unsexy work. The people who build careers that matter are the ones who are willing to go deep on the unglamorous stuff — the process documentation, the data audit, the difficult conversation. That’s where the real leverage is.”
Learning a field from the bottom up provides mastery that technology can’t. Hobbs sees AI as a genuine force multiplier for people who already know what good looks like and can correct technology’s mistakes. “I want to encourage everybody to know how to do the job without the technology,” she says. “Because when you can do that and you become a master of your craft, then what technology can do as an overlay is make you unstoppable.”
Her three non-negotiables for anyone building a career: Outwork the room, be a self-starter, and own your mistakes. “The leaders who take accountability — who say, ‘That was on me, and here’s what I’m going to do differently’ — are the ones who people trust with bigger and better things.”
Hobbs’ ultimate goal isn’t to be indispensable. It’s to build systems strong enough not to need her. “I want to leave behind systems strong enough to sustain themselves, and people empowered enough to know what good looks like even when no one is watching,” she says.
Outside work, she’s traded some of her former community volunteer roles for a new one: sports equipment manager, scheduler, and enthusiastic sideline presence for her 7-year-old son, who is, she reports, already showing signs of the same calculating mind. “He’s always adding, subtracting, always wanting to know the numbers,” she says, laughing. “That’s my favorite role. My favorite by far.”
