Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel of StarkWare, is excited about zero knowledge proof technology (ZKP), a revolutionary tool in cryptography. She explains that ZKP allows people to prove something is true without revealing underlying information.
ZKPs enable verification without disclosure—complete, sound, and private. While often discussed in the context of blockchain scalability and transaction speed, their possible use extends far beyond cryptocurrencies. Healthcare records, voting systems, and government services all rely on forms of verification that routinely overshare personal data. Zero-knowledge technology offers a path to redesign those systems around privacy by default.
“StarkWare is deep, cutting-edge technology,” she says. “These are some of the smartest cryptographers and developers in the world.”
This potential drew Kirkpatrick Bos to StarkWare, a company building cryptographic systems at the frontier of zero-knowledge technology. The work is not only about present-day challenges. StarkWare has also developed quantum-resistant technology—an increasingly urgent priority as advances in quantum computing threaten existing cryptographic standards.
“Quantum computing could break a lot of what we rely on today,” she notes. “Quantum-resistant code makes that significantly harder.”
Choosing the Right Room
Prior to joining StarkWare, Kirkpatrick Bos was in listed derivatives on digital assets. She was the Chief Legal Officer of Cboe Digital, a U.S. regulated exchange and clearinghouse for spot crypto and crypto derivatives markets; and General Counsel of Maple Finance, a capital efficient corporate debt marketplace which facilitates crypto institutional borrowing via liquidity pools funded by Decentralized Financial (DeFi) ecosystems. Kirkpatrick Bos was also a partner in the Special Matters and Government Investigations practice at King & Spalding.
Kirkpatrick Bos is candid about career inflection points. She has experienced the frustration of executing a plan within a business that wasn’t growing as expected—and realizing she wasn’t in the room where the real decisions were being made.
“That’s a difficult place to be,” she says. “Especially if you believe you could be doing more.”
The response, in her view, is rarely comfort. It is movement.
“It’s much easier to stay where you are than to start over,” she notes. “But if you want growth, you have to take that risk.”
She is especially direct about this advice for women, who are often encouraged—explicitly or implicitly—to value stability over advancement.
“I’ve always approached my career strategically. You have to understand what’s next.”
Mentorship, Integrity, and Judgment
Kirkpatrick Bos credits much of her professional grounding to early mentors, including a senior partner she worked with for over a decade at King & Spalding.
“He could be prickly,” she recalls, “but he inspired loyalty through integrity.”
That lesson—never compromise ethical standards—has stayed with her. So has the importance of seeing what is possible. Senior women who pushed boundaries in their careers made abstract ambition tangible.
“If you see it, you can be it,” she emphasizes. “If others are doing it, it’s not impossible.”
The guidance she now imparts is unsentimental and practical: protect your principles, make hard decisions when required, put your family first, and outsource what you can.
Leadership in an Age of AI
As artificial intelligence reshapes professional services, Kirkpatrick Bos remains skeptical of claims that judgment can be automated.
“AI is a powerful tool,” she acknowledges. “But it can’t replace instinct.”
Over her career, she has seen lawyers develop competence through experience—and others who never do.
“Judgment is hard to teach. Problem-solving, instinct, knowing when something doesn’t feel right—that still matters.”
As General Counsel, much of her role is translation: helping regulators understand technology, and helping technologists understand the law.
“You have to listen carefully,” she says. “Then explain things in a way the other side can actually understand.”
Why It Endures
There are always difficult days. Seniority does not eliminate friction; it reframes it.
What sustains Kirkpatrick Bos is the belief that the work itself matters—that she is helping shape the legal and regulatory framework for technologies that will define the next generation.
She imagines a future where people look back in disbelief at how much personal information was once routinely shared to prove a single fact.
Innovative technology, she believes, does more than improve systems. It keeps people engaged, even when the work is hard.
And in that sense, zero knowledge is not just a cryptographic concept—it is a blueprint for more thoughtful leadership.
By Jessica Darmoni
