Karyl Fowler Of Tradeverifyd On What We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains

An Interview With David Leichner

Build for visibility, not just efficiency: After COVID, many companies learned the hard way that systems optimized only for cost breakdown fast under stress. Visibility lets you plan and pivot. One client we worked with had a spike in detentions due to origin disputes because they couldn’t see all the inputs. Tradeverifyd helped them identify which products were USMCA-eligible but improperly filed, freeing up capital and reducing compliance risk.

The cascading logistical problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Eastern Europe, have made securing a reliable supply chain a national imperative. In addition, severe cyberattacks like the highly publicized Colonial pipeline attack, have brought supply chain cybersecurity into the limelight. So what must manufacturers and policymakers do to ensure that we have secure and resilient supply chains? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights from their experiences about how we can address these challenges. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Karyl Fowler.

Karyl Fowler is Chief Policy Officer at , a supply chain intelligence company advancing transparency and security in global trade. Previously CEO and Co-Founder of Transmute, Karyl built the company from inception to acquisition over 8 years, during which her team pioneered the use of verifiable data in cross-border trade. Her earlier career instilled an appreciation of public-private collaboration, spanning strategic marketing and commercialization roles for biotech and semiconductor startups with high regulatory burdens like FDA, HIPAA, and ITAR. She holds an MS in Technology Commercialization from UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business and a BA in English and Political Science from Southwestern University. Karyl co-chairs the policy working group at the US-Mexico Foundation, is a founding advisory member of , serves on the Leadership Council of the , and previously served two elected terms on the Steering Committee for the .

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

Thanks, I’m happy to be here. I’ll where my hometown community college interviewed me last year that delves into my background. I was born and raised in Victoria, Texas, about three hours north of the Mexican border. I attended public school and played competitive sports, with volleyball being my main focus.

I eventually attended Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, for my undergraduate studies. My first job introduced me to entrepreneurship and startups in the biotech space, where I fell in love with innovation and deep tech. After getting my business degree and a brief stint in economic development with the City of Austin, I entered the semiconductor industry. There, I experienced firsthand the geopolitics of one of the most complex and highly regulated supply chains on the planet: chips.

This experience drove my career focus toward traceable, secure, privacy-preserving technologies in the supply chain. I co-founded Transmute, serving as CEO for 8 years, working in exactly this space. Recently, we joined forces with Mesur.io to launch Tradeverifyd, where we continue focusing on securing and mitigating risk in global supply chains and trade.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Two pivotal career stories stand out. First, while at Novati Technologies, I managed biotech clients developing medical chips like implantable drug delivery devices and genetic sequencing technology. These clients often commercialized first in markets with easier regulatory pathways than the US — Europe for CE marking or China, which was rapidly expanding its genetic sequencing services using Western technology.

One day, I received an unexpected joint call from executives at competing sequencing companies informing me they had new roles at the same firm but wanted to maintain our relationship. When I met with them, I discovered a Chinese company had acquired a defunct American sequencing firm intending to replace Western sequencers in China’s booming market with Chinese-owned IP.

This experience crystallized my understanding of how different regulatory environments and government policies directly shape market creation and development trajectories.

The second pivotal story from my semiconductor days ignited my passion for data privacy and personal rights. I won a raffle for full genome sequencing when fewer than 2,000 people globally had experienced this. While excited to contribute to innovation as “an n of one,” I spent years trying to obtain my raw genetic data.

During the pandemic, I finally tracked down the company that acquired my information and purchased a copy of my own genome. It arrived unceremoniously via UPS on an open hard drive with my patient ID on a sticky note. This experience, coupled with watching numerous problematic business models emerge around genetic sequencing, taught me critical lessons about statistics, consent, and data ownership.

These insights have shaped my career trajectory, ensuring the technologies I develop prioritize consent, control, and privacy preservation from the outset.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Another hard one! To narrow it down, I’ll share what first comes to mind: my personal and professional mantra, “reframe” (which I have tattooed on me). This reflects my core trait of adaptability. I strive to be consistent yet flexible, always.

This mantra reminds me that perspective is our only true control point. When Plan A fails, I move to Plan B or C, viewing failure as information that guides me closer to success.

Having worked in numerous startups and run my own business for eight years before joining Tradeverifyd, I’ve navigated countless highs and lows. A pivotal moment for Transmute came during a financing round when an investor ghosted us on wire day, coinciding with the Silicon Valley Bank crash. Simultaneously, we signed large new clients we had expected to support with that additional financing.

We immediately had to redefine success under new economic constraints and determine how to deliver for these clients with fewer resources than planned. I’m proud to say we got through it, though it wasn’t easy!

Second, a key character strength is my identity centered on growth. While some call this a growth mindset, for me it means seeing the opportunity to evolve in everything, whether from client feedback, board member perspectives, employee insights, or even a silent audience (no questions are still feedback).

I constantly hunt for learning opportunities in every interaction. With learning as my primary goal, I prevent my ego from interfering (important since entrepreneurship is inherently ego-obliterating). My favorite book recommendation is “Thanks for the Feedback.”

This trait crystallized during Techstars 2018 with my company, Transmute. During “mentor madness” — an exercise designed to create whiplash and trigger your ego — we pitched 8–12 times daily for two weeks to various potential mentors and investors. This experience tests your ability to maintain distance between your identity as a founder and the scrutiny your business faces.

Lastly, I’m squarely a legislative leader. In line with my other traits, I highly value expert and diverse perspectives when building teams. I’ve found that ensuring all voices are heard during planning phases optimizes success and elevates everyone’s sense of ownership in their roles. However, this approach should never delay timely decisions. Making a point to surround myself with people more intelligent than I ensures this strategy remains effective.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes! I recently sold Transmute and joined Tradeverifyd as their Chief Policy Officer. At Tradeverifyd, we’re scaling a platform that helps companies verify and assert product origins and compliance details during cross-border movement. We’re not just building another dashboard; we’re embedding data traceability into the trade process itself.

Working with manufacturers, brokers, and regulators, we eliminate opacity that hinders business. We provide the most comprehensive N-tier map available — a source of truth about what’s being shipped, its origin, and potential risks. This gives users more control, accelerates compliance workflows, and helps regulators focus enforcement where it matters most, benefiting national security, commercial agility, and consumer safety.

My role centers on “product-policy fit”: I work with clients, ensuring our platform addresses their pressing trade compliance concerns while advocating in DC for our open-standards approach to supply chain modernization.

To ensure that we are all on the same page let’s begin with some simple definitions. What does the term “supply chain” encompass?

Well, supply chain often gets mistakenly labeled as a vertical that startups focus on. Anyone working in supply chain knows it’s not a vertical but a massive horizontal that touches everything we physically interact with and use to build our world.

Supply chain represents the chain of custody for anything, from the apple we eat for breakfast to the shampoo we use at night. It encompasses the inception of raw materials through all the different hands and processes transforming those materials until the end product is formed and transported to users. Increasingly, “supply chain” also refers to post-use activities like recycling and reuse in the circular economy.

Simply put, supply chains are the chain of custody or sequence of processes involved in designing, building, delivering, consuming, and repurposing any good or service.

Can you help articulate what the weaknesses are in our current supply chain systems?

The biggest weakness is opacity. Without understanding our baseline supply chain health and operational resiliency, we can’t shift from reactive to proactive management — a goal since COVID changed paradigms. Current tools are too fragmented and slow for today’s dynamic trade environment, with most companies only seeing a portion of their Tier 1 or 2 suppliers.

No single system integrates all impact factors (product details, trade compliance, weather, current events and geopolitics, etc.). Each platform manages only one segment from procurement to logistics, making it difficult to identify risks and opportunities in time.

This opacity isn’t easily solved. Businesses and regulators need a high-resolution, comprehensive, near-real-time view of their supply chains tailored to their specific concerns while protecting corporate IP and trusted relationships.

Recent tariff announcements illustrate this problem. Since tariffs apply based on rules of origin (which vary by product and region), companies are scrambling to compile information from multiple systems to verify the origins of their goods and material inputs, often beyond Tier 2 suppliers, to calculate tariff burdens or address regulatory inquiries with traceability evidence.

Can you help define what a nationally secure and resilient supply chain would look like?

Many technical approaches exist, including our innovative secure data technologies at Tradeverifyd. Broadly speaking, a secure, resilient supply chain is one we can visualize and model scenarios against, with enough agility to adapt as needed. This requires sufficient visibility into actors, products, and supply chain intricacies, plus tools to quickly implement risk mitigation and opportunity capture plans that minimize consumer disruption.

Post-COVID, industries have focused on digitizing supply chains, making resilience measurement increasingly possible. While common metrics exist, significant variation occurs across product types and regions. Solving opacity remains challenging but crucial. At Tradeverifyd, we specialize in creating standardized visibility across this diverse landscape.

My particular expertise is in cybersecurity so I’m particularly passionate about this topic. Can you share some examples of recent and notable cyber attacks against our supply chain? Why do you think these attacks were so significant?

The SolarWinds breach is still one of the most pivotal examples, not because it was the first, but because it woke up both the public and private sectors to how deeply interconnected and opaque our software supply chains are. A single compromised update affected thousands of organizations. More recently, attacks on ports and logistics companies, like the ransomware attack on Expeditors International, have shown how a single incident can disrupt the physical movement of goods globally. These breaches aren’t just about stolen data anymore. They can stall economies. That’s why secure, auditable supply chains — both digital and physical — must remain a national priority.

What would you recommend for the government or for tech leaders to do to improve supply chain cybersecurity?

I’d say that a clear view of all cyber or software chains of custody (aka software supply chain) is equally as critical in this era as it is for physical goods supply chains. For both policymakers and tech leaders, the answer simply starts with visibility. You can’t secure what you can’t see. That means better data-sharing mechanisms, more interoperability between systems (using open-standards-based approaches to ensure this), and stronger verification of source data across the supply chain.

The government should double down on procurement standards that require traceable, secure-by-design software and hardware components. And tech leaders must prioritize transparency and accountability within their vendor ecosystems. It’s also time we treat data provenance in digital systems with the same seriousness that we treat origin documentation in physical trade. Chain of custody matters whether it’s from the mine or farm to table, or it’s across bits and atoms.

What are the “5 Things We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains” and why?

1. Build for visibility, not just efficiency: After COVID, many companies learned the hard way that systems optimized only for cost breakdown fast under stress. Visibility lets you plan and pivot. One client we worked with had a spike in detentions due to origin disputes because they couldn’t see all the inputs. Tradeverifyd helped them identify which products were USMCA-eligible but improperly filed, freeing up capital and reducing compliance risk.

2. Modernize the digital infrastructure of trade: Much of the import-export system still runs on PDFs and emails. We need verifiable data, not static documents. Our work supporting CBP’s push for digital compliance via APIs and their Global Interoperability Standards for trade is a step in the right direction — and we’re proud to help commercial users align with that vision.

3. Align incentives for trust-based data sharing anchored in reality: One thing we’ve learned is that companies want to collaborate to an extent, but they fear losing control of proprietary data. That’s why Tradeverifyd built our platform around privacy-preserving tech. You can share what you need to — and no more.

4. Strengthen local-regional-global redundancy: Resilience is often about having options. We helped one of our clients shift key sourcing from overseas to North America, but they didn’t sever ties entirely. Instead, they built a dynamic sourcing strategy with built-in redundancy. That’s the future — not isolationism, but flexibility.

5. Invest in people as much as platforms: Technology is only as useful as the people who use it. We need a workforce that understands supply chains, cybersecurity, compliance, and tech across sectors. One of our efforts right now is our participation in DHS’s SVIP (Silicon Valley Innovation Program) with US CBP, which brings startups and technologists to the table to solve agency challenges in a way that also satisfies commercial needs. It’s a great model for knowledge transfer and innovation, especially public/private collaboration.

Are there other ideas or considerations that should encourage us to reimagine our supply chain?

Yes! It’s not just about risk. I’m excited about what happens when companies widely adopt traceability tools like Tradeverifyd, giving us a complete picture of global supply chains.

When we achieve high-resolution visibility, we unlock true agility. Trade becomes more efficient — faster customs clearance, accurate tariff enforcement, and precise interception of problematic shipments without delaying legitimate goods.

We also gain granular control and real-time adaptability. Supply shifts could respond seasonally or to natural disasters with greater precision — imagine supermarkets, like HEB, optimizing forecasting regional demand based on real-time supply conditions [say, during hurricane season].

Tariffs could be enforced surgically, rewarding compliance while targeting only violators. Regulators might test new policies using supply chain simulations. With improved data reliability, what new regulatory approaches become possible? What financial markets might emerge when data-driven stability reduces the impact of regional regulatory changes?

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

You never know what your idea can trigger. I feel I’m part of the macro-changes I’m most passionate about at Tradeverifyd, but I guess personally, I’d push for a movement centered on visibility infrastructure — but one that includes consumers, not just policymakers and supply chain professionals. Most people have no idea how their Amazon box gets to their door, how building materials reach a job site, or what vulnerabilities lie beneath everyday goods. We’ve normalized convenience without understanding the complexity and fragility underneath it. I’d love to accelerate a baseline societal awareness of what it takes to move a product from raw material to finished good, and how interdependent, opaque, and often risky that process is. I want people to expect traceability in the products they buy, the same way they expect nutrition labels on food. Because better visibility isn’t just a business advantage or a compliance tool; it’s how we build more secure, agile, and accountable systems. And when consumers demand it, companies and governments are more likely to prioritize it.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow my work on, read my writing on Medium, or learn more about what we’re building at. I also speak at events focused on trade policy, digital infrastructure, and public-private collaboration

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!