Mariners name veteran executive to senior vice president of information technology

The Seattle Mariners today announced that Kari Escobedo, who has over 20-years of experience in leadership roles in technology, healthcare, telecommunications and retail, is the team’s new Senior Vice President of Information Technology.

Escobedo comes to the Mariners from Bartell Drugs, where she was Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. While at Bartell, she led a redesign of the company’s Information Technology, Enterprise Resource Planning and other systems initiatives for the company.

She will lead all areas of technology for the Mariners from Baseball Operations systems to business intelligence and data, ballpark technology and fan customer experience, both in person and online.

Escobedo, who played Division 1 softball at California State University-Fullerton, says this position is a perfect blend of her passion for baseball and technology.

“There are so many opportunities to leverage technology to enhance the fan experience in the ballpark and extend it outside the game day to build and grow the connections between the Mariners and the fan base,” said Escobedo.

Escobedo is intrigued with the possibilities presented by 5G technology and how the connectivity speed and capacity will make it possible to “create rich fan experiences in the ballpark,” whether that’s with sound, video or data, and “connect fans to each other during a game in ways that weren’t possible before now.”

In addition to serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Bartell Drugs, Escobedo led the Enterprise & Digital Services areas at Kaiser Permanente where she spearheaded process improvements for human resources, finance and marketing systems and created a customer-centric digital technology team.

As Vice President, Enterprise Systems Development for T-Mobile, Escobedo led the technology team responsible for the development and delivery of solutions for the Customer Retail & Enterprise Systems that supported the T-Mobile business transformation.

Before joining T-Mobile, she was the Director of Information Management for Starbucks, and before Starbucks, she held leadership positions at Microsoft and Visio.

Escobedo graduated from Cal State-Fullerton with a degree in Business Administration. The recipient of an academic and athletic scholarship, she played catcher for the Titans softball team for two seasons before suffering a wrist injury. Kari is a member of the Board of Advisors (College of Business & Economics) at Western Washington University, an Advisor for the University of Washington Master of Science of Information Systems where she mentors MIS students, and is a board member of WeCOACH, which is dedicated to the recruitment, advancement, and retention of women coaches of all sports and levels.

Kari resides in Seattle with her wife, Liz, four children (Kelsey, Kylie, Ryan, and Alexandra) and a menagerie of pets (a 14-year old bloodhound named Lulubelle, two chocolate labs, Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt, kitten, Hank “The Tank” Aaron, and Romeo, a leopard gecko).