Kathleen Kool Biography and Net Worth

Katie Kool was elected to our Board in March of 2022. She began Board service on July 1, upon her retirement from Procter & Gamble, contingent on her election by the shareholders. She was elected as Board Chair in June 2024. Ms. Kool also serves as a member of the Audit Committee and the Compensation and Talent Management Committee. Ms. Kool is a seasoned finance executive, who began her career with Procter & Gamble in 1995 and successfully transitioned to general management as a divisional CEO, with a proven history of delivering superior results across both Consumer Products and Services business models. She brings executive, financial, international, innovation, and investor relations experience to Digimarc’s Board of Directors. Starting in January of 2019, she served as the CEO of Tide Cleaners, a wholly owned subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, which is a service-based retailer providing out of home dry cleaning and laundry services through franchise and corporate stores, lockers, home delivery, and college campuses. For the three and a half years prior to her CEO experience, Ms. Kool was the CFO for North America Fabric Care, which includes the Tide, Gain, Downy, and Bounce brands and has over $8 billion in retail sales. She was also CFO for the Global Procter & Gamble Professional business, where she developed a 5-year strategic plan, including a more focused operating model, profit and loss, and cash investments to deliver sustainable Operating Total Shareholder Return. In addition to her extensive business leadership experience, Katie was a key member of Procter & Gamble’s award-winning Investor Relations team for 5.5 years, during which she partnered with 3 CEO’s and led communications for the strategy renewal that spanned two $10 billion productivity programs and a more focused portfolio of strategic brands. Ms. Kool is also a Board Member at Aspen Aerogels (ASPN) and serves as Chair of the Audit Committee and is a member of the Nominating, Governance, and Sustainability Committee.  In her personal time, Ms. Kool was Co-Founder & CEO of KW CrossFit. She is a Founder and President of Impact100 Genesee County, a nonprofit organization that empowers women to pool their funds and award significant grants to transform lives in their community.  Ms. Kool is a Board Member and CFO for Sonje Ayiti, a nonprofit organization focused on providing tools for Haitians to help themselves via education, economic development, and health promotion, and she co-led the creation of the Cima School of Hope in Haiti, a government-licensed school with over 300 students in Pre-K through 11th grade and over 30 employees.  Ms. Kool holds a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Kalamazoo College and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis.

Ms. Kool’s experience is particularly germane to Digimarc’s initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion at all levels of the Company, improve the Company’s finance oversight and operations, and help oversee the Company’s investor relations program, and business innovation and business process reengineering areas. She is accomplished across many disciplines with extraordinary leadership qualities and financial and analytical skills, including business analysis and value creation, financial controls and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and talent recruitment, development and retention. She has successfully navigated a business through the COVID pandemic, introduced and managed disruptive business innovation activities, and led the acquisition, integration, and expansion of two start-ups. She has successfully managed investor relations challenges, and has strong controllership skills, leading the General Ledger Accounting organization for the Americas from the San Jose Costa Rica Service Center during the integration of the Gillette acquisition.