The People Building Coravel
Karissa Bussard
Chief Human Resources Officer
Atlanta, GA
Karissa Bussard is Coravel's founding Chief Human Resources Officer. She joined the company to do something she describes as the best job in HR - build a company from the ground up.
Karissa brings more than 20 years of global HR leadership across industrial, energy, technology, healthcare, media and digital infrastructure businesses. She spent nearly 2 decades at GE, where she served as Head of HR for GE Digital Technology, supporting 6,000+ employees across 100+ countries - and was a key HR leader in GE's separation into 3 publicly traded companies. She also led global organization and talent development for GE’s FieldCore subsidiary and partnered with the Chief Technology Officer at GE Power as its services engineering organization grew from 700 to more than 6,000 people.
She knows data centers from both sides - as an HR partner to the teams running GE's on-premises data centers and as the HR leader through GE Aerospace's move from on-premises to the cloud.
At Coravel, Karissa helped build the CEO and executive team in partnership with the Board and shareholders, stand up the people function across the United States, Spain and Australia and designed the workforce strategy, operating rigor and culture needed to support the company's growth.
On site with the Coravel team.
What brought you to Coravel?
Simply put, the opportunity to build a company, not inherit one. I spent 2 decades inside large, established enterprises, most recently helping lead GE's separation into 3 public companies. I learned how great companies run. Coravel is the chance to decide how one runs from day one.
It also offered strong backing, a clear growth opportunity and a CEO who treats organizational design and culture as business strategy, not as something HR does on the side.
What do you think Coravel is doing differently?
We’re combining the discipline of a mature operator with the agility of a young company. We have an operating model with clear accountability and decision rights, and we’re building a culture that lets us adapt as the market and our customers' needs evolve.
I say this often - culture is the strategy. Land, power and capital are table stakes in this industry. How our people work together is what turns these investments into operating data centers on time.
What are you most focused on right now?
Scaling our team thoughtfully. We’re building a workforce strategy that ties hiring to our development milestones, bringing in experienced leaders for critical roles and putting our values and operating model into daily practice.
I’m also focused on the fundamentals that make a company stronger over time - succession planning, recognition and listening to employees early and often. People are our greatest asset, and that only means something if the systems around them prove it.
What's something people may not understand about digital infrastructure?
People picture rows of servers, but some of the hardest work happens years before a single server arrives.
There are relatively few people who have developed, built and operated data centers at this scale, and the competition for that experience is intense. Finding, developing and keeping these people requires the same discipline we apply to every other part of our business.
What does “Engineered to Deliver. Built to Last.” mean to you?
For me, it is a say/do standard. Engineered to Deliver means being intentional about how we work, with clear accountability and standards we measure ourselves against.
Built to Last means hiring and developing people who will be here as our business grows, and creating a culture that outlasts any single leader, including me.
What will the future of digital infrastructure require?
Talent at the speed of power. The industry has learned to move quickly on land, capital and energy. The companies that succeed will also need to build and retain experienced teams that can turn those investments into operating infrastructure. That is a people problem - and it deserves the same rigor as a power problem.
What's something people might not know about you?
I started my career as a counselor and have a master's degree in mental health counseling. I also ran the NBCUniversal Page Program early in my career, which was even written into an episode of 30 Rock. These experiences still shape how I lead: listen first, then act.
Outside of work, I am a wife and mom of three boys, a foodie and a member of the Development Committee for the Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research.