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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Spring 2004 : Juggling to Thrive

Juggling to thrive: Karen Gilles Larson takes charge

by Judy Woodward

When Karen Gilles Larson (economics '75) started taking classes at the U in 1966, she was a 24-year-old mother with three children under five. It took her nine years to get her degree and another decade before she launched her real career.

As a professional woman, Larson may have been something of a late bloomer, but she certainly has made up for it since. Larson is now the president and CEO of Synovis Life Technologies, a medical device manufacturer that recently celebrated 25 straight profitable quarters and earned itself a slot on the Fortune 100 Fastest Growing Companies and Forbes 200 Best Small Companies lists, and the Russell 2000® Index.

Larson is widely credited for turning around the Minneapolis-based company after a change in Medicare reimbursement policies caused a devastating plunge in demand for the company's main product, the Peri-Strip® implantable surgical aid. Under Larson's leadership, the company diversified its product line, developed new markets for the Peri-Strip, and bounced back more profitable than before.

It's a record that any executive would be proud of, and in Larson's case it's all the more remarkable because when she started in the industry she was usually one of the only women in whatever business situation she found herself in.

When she reflects on the far-from-unbroken arc of her career, Larson says, “I am evidence that there is no ‘mommy track.' I say to young women, ‘Don't accept the stereotypes. Define your own path.'”

Larson began her own path in life most inauspiciously, as the daughter of an absent father and an alcoholic mother. She remembers a lonely Christmas Eve from her early childhood when her mother lay in a stupor on the couch while the holiday cooking smells from the kitchen gradually turned acrid. “The child I was died in that moment,” she says, “but survival mechanisms carried me through.”

Maybe it was her instinct for survival that propelled her to continue her education. After leaving home at the age of 16, she was able to finish high school with the help of a part-time job and a friend's parents, who gave her a place to live. She started college in La Crosse, Wisc., but soon left to marry and start a family.

Several years later, she was living in Minneapolis when she decided to pursue an interest in investing by taking a few classes at the University. She laughs, “It gave me adults to talk to, because otherwise I was at home with three small children.”

From mommy track to fast track

While raising a family—her last child was born in 1972—Larson continued to take classes whenever she could fit them in. In 1975, she graduated with a minor in chemistry in addition to her B.A. in economics. And then, she jokes, “I did what anybody with a chemistry background would do. [With friends] I opened Mes Amies clothing shop on the site of what is now Java Jack's in south Minneapolis.”

It wasn't until 1983 that Larson, newly divorced and with her children's college tuition bills looming, decided to enter the corporate world. In a nine-month whirl, she armed herself with an additional degree in accounting from the University of Saint Thomas and then acquired her first “business" job, as an accountant. In April of 1989, she joined what was then called Bio-Vascular, Inc. Less than a decade later, in 1997, she became the head of the company, renamed Synovis Life Technologies.

Although Larson has been praised for her collegial management style, she dismisses the notion that women manage differently. “It's truly an individual thing,” she says. She refers to herself as “an equalist" when it comes to personnel decisions. “My only question is ‘Can you do the job?' I respect anyone who respects others.”

At the summit of her career, Larson has recently set some new goals for herself. She intends to step down as CEO in two years, when she will be 63. Unlike some retired executives, Larson has no intention of taking things easy. She plans to write two books. One will be on leadership. “The other will be on how to survive a dysfunctional family upbringing,” she says. “It's a gift…why one person is a survivor, but there are things you can do when you are on that journey that can change the path.”

With Larson, whether it's juggling family and career, running a company, or writing a book, her response is always the same. “I've always looked around—usually up—and said to myself, ‘I think I can do that.'”