Karen Klein, GC of HotelTonight. Photo: Timothy Archibald for Corporate Counsel

Please welcome to the stage: Ticketmaster's new executive vice president and general counsel, Karen Klein. She joins the Los Angeles-based live-event ticketing giant from HotelTonight, a mobile-only company that specializes in last-minute hotel deals, where she had been chief administrative officer and GC since September 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“First and foremost, I was interested in joining a great team, and after meeting Jared [Smith, president of Ticketmaster] and the other executives, I knew this was not only a great job, but that I would be working with smart people,” Klein told Corporate Counsel on why she moved to Ticketmaster. “Second, having spent almost my entire career in the technology space, including 17 years in the travel technology business where I helped build great brands that provided consumers with travel experiences, I was excited by the opportunity to be part of such a great brand in the live event space.”

According to Ticketmaster, it increased its revenue by 14 percent last year and also managed more than 400,000 events, delivered 500 million tickets to fans in 28 countries, and added 10 million new tickets through new clients. This has also increased Klein's responsibilities in what she said is a new role at the company.

“In addition to the legal department, I will also be overseeing our government relations and human resources departments, where we also have strong teams in place,” Klein said. “I will be focused on creating and implementing strategies to support and build on Ticketmaster's impressive growth.”

Klein has been working on the issues that arise at the intersection of law and technology, namely in the travel industry, for nearly 20 years. Prior to joining HotelTonight, she was GC at Kayak.com for six years and a high-ranking in-house lawyer at Orbitz LLC from 2001 to 2007 before that.

In an October 2015 profile in Corporate Counsel, Klein said she stayed at Orbitz and Kayak for as long as she did because she loved “that the companies I worked for were true disrupters.”

“After Kayak's IPO, I wanted to take time off, but the founders of HotelTonight talked to me about what they were doing, creating a new category—last-minute and mobile-only, and I loved that,” she said in the report.

She said she also enjoyed working at startup companies because of the daily variety of work and the personalities of people who want to work at companies in their earliest days.

“There's less structure, and everyone has a lot of autonomy,” she added. “That presents some challenges on the legal side. There is more room for risk, but I have chances to not just be a lawyer, but a business partner building the company.”

In her new role at Ticketmaster, Klein will lead the company's legal, government affairs, public policy and human resources teams and report to Smith, according to the company's statement.

“Karen has unparalleled experience with some of the world's leading consumer brands,” Smith said in the statement. “Her extensive background in technology, and specifically the travel industry, provides her the unique ability to step in and effectively help manage and educate on the complex issues that face large global e-commerce companies like Ticketmaster. We're excited for Karen to bring her expertise to the Ticketmaster leadership team.”

A graduate of Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Institute of Technology, Klein began her legal career as a corporate associate at Katten Muchin Rosenman and then worked in-house at Platinum Technology and Installshield Software Corp. before joining Orbitz, LinkedIn said.

Klein will divide her time in Chicago, where her family lives, and Los Angeles, where Ticketmaster is headquartered.