Secretary Caren Merrick
Former Secretary of Commerce, Commonwealth of Virginia
Entrepreneur, Investor & Virginia’s Top Economic Strategist
Caren Merrick is a business leader in Virginia with over 25 years of experience launching growth companies and reinventing businesses.
Merrick has served as Secretary of Commerce and Trade for the Commonwealth of Virginia since January of 2022, overseeing 13 agencies with 1,300 team members and a $3 billion budget. She leads economic growth through a variety of initiatives and agencies to generate an environment that makes Virginia the best place to start, grow, or relocate a business.
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In the private sector, Merrick is known as a strategic and entrepreneurial leader. She co-founded the enterprise software company webMethods, growing it from zero to $200 million and the most successful software IPO in history at offering. webMethods was sold to SoftwareAG for nearly $600 million. She was founder and CEO of Pocket Mentor, a mobile app delivering leadership tools, and is a partner in NextGen Venture Partners, investing in category defining early-stage companies.
Merrick has served on boards of public and private growth companies with combined assets of $12 billion and revenues of $3 billion across a variety of sectors, specializing in private equity, financial services and REITs. She has been named a Top 500 Business Influencer by Virginia Business Magazine.
She has been a board member at a number of non-profits, including the webMethods Foundation, which she co-founded. She also served six years as a board director for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and served on the board of the D.C. Chapter of the International Women’s Forum.
Merrick grew up in a rural community and is the first woman in her family to earn a college degree, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles.
A Virginia resident since 1988, Merrick and her husband, Phillip, have been married for 30 years and have two adult sons.