Karen Bird, Chief Information Officer for Hooters of America is accountable for the strategy and execution of technology systems and services for multiple functional areas within the company. She has responsibilities for both corporate and franchised departments within the overall organization. Karen joined the Hooters of America executive team in July, 2017.

From late 2011 through July, 2017, Karen served as the Vice President, Information Technology for Buffalo Wild Wings. In this role, Karen was responsible for establishing the technology architecture and framework that delivered all core business information to the Buffalo Wild Wings Enterprise. She was instrumental in the development of the strategic plan that delivered a unified technology platform for over 1200 company-owned and franchised restaurants and the delivery of an enterprise service platform for the automation of data integrations.

Prior to joining Buffalo Wild Wings, she served as the technology executive for a number of casual dine and quick service restaurant chains. Her prior history includes; CIO for Whataburger Restaurants, VP of Restaurant Information Solutions for Brinker International, Vice President of Business Systems for Advantica Restaurant Group, and Director of Retail Technology Solutions for Dunkin Brands. Karen started her career as a restaurant-level employee at Burger King. After two years in restaurant operations there, she moved into store accounting services and ultimately into
various roles within the Information Systems department that helped build her technology expertise.