Karissa Cook ‘13 re-joined the Stanford beach volleyball program for the 2026 season as an assistant coach.
Cook returns to The Farm and the beach volleyball program, most recently serving as an assistant coach from 2015-2018. Cook is also a Stanford alumna and a four-year letterwinner for the Cardinal Women’s Volleyball program, earning her bachelor’s degree in product design and earning the Stanford Award of Excellence, given to the top 10 percent of each graduating class, while on The Farm.
Cook spent the last few years in the sports technology field, including a three-year stint with Amazon as both a knowledge engineer for Alexa Sports and product manager for Amazon AGI from 2022 to 2025. Cook most recently held the chief product officer role at Volleyball Life, a volleyball ecosystem platform used by organizations such as the AAU, AVP, BVCA, P1440, and USA Volleyball to run volleyball events.
Cook’s homecoming also marks her return to collegiate coaching, most recently serving as an assistant coach for Loyola Marymount’s beach volleyball team for the 2021 season. She was an integral part of the staff that led the Lions to their second consecutive WCC title and their first-ever NCAA National Championship Tournament appearance, where they finished third with wins over the tournament’s No. 1 and No. 4 seeds. The 2021 AVCA Thirty Under Thirty Coaching Award winner led film review and opponent scouting sessions, implemented and led mindset training, and was the Lions’ top two pairs’ on-court coach throughout the season.
Cook’s coaching prowess is also evident at the club, private, and high school levels, spending time as a private coach from 2018-22, lead court coach for the MBSand Beach Volleyball Club from 2019-21, and assistant coach for Mira Costa’s Varsity Beach Volleyball team/head coach of Mira Costa’s JV squad from 2018-20.
Cook also competed professionally on the AVP tour from 2017 to 2021. She and partner Jace Pardon won the first beach volleyball gold medal in United States history at the 2019 Pan American Games, held in Lima, Peru, and marked notable wins at AVP Austin (2019), ANOC World Beach Games (Doha 2019), CEV Snow Volleyball (Moscow 2018), and NORCECA Martinique (2018).
Cook’s beach volleyball career began at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she competed for the Rainbow Wahine during the 2013-14 campaign. She was a 2014 AVCA Beach Volleyball All-American, 2014 AVCA National Pairs Championship Finalist, 2014 AVCA Team Championship Semifinalist, and team captain during her lone season at Hawaii. Cook graduated from the University of Hawai'i in December 2014 with a master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
As a member of the Stanford Women’s Volleyball team, Cook was an All-Pac-12 Conference honorable mention as a junior in 2011. She was also named Pac-12 All-Academic honorable mention three times in her sophomore, junior, and senior seasons on The Farm. Cook ranks seventh all-time in assists with 3,027 and led the Cardinal in assists in the 2009 and 2011 seasons.
Karissa and her husband, former Stanford football student-athlete and current Executive Associate Athletics Director of Strategy, Shayne Skov ‘14, have one son, August (Gus).