Karen is a corporate professional with a career spanning several decades. She has held senior positions with a variety of organisations enabling the development of a broad range of skills and experiences in both leadership and project delivery. Her most recent role was as CEO at Guide Dogs Victoria, where over ten years, she delivered strong leadership together with innovative and commercially ground-breaking projects. Karen is an admired and widely respected CEO across both public and private sectors, adept at managing diverse stakeholders. She is known for her empathy and tireless work to ensure both quality and equity outcomes for clients and the community.

Under Karen’s leadership, Guide Dogs Victoria (GDV) delivered a $30m capital campaign to transform GDV’s campus into Australia’s first sensory campus. The new facilities are aimed at improving the lives of people living with blindness or low vision, providing a world class environment for breeding and training guide dogs, while also engaging and educating the community.

Karen is an innovator with a bias for action, she was one of the founders of Breast Cancer Network Australia, and co-founder of the Australian chapter of the International Women’s Forum (IWF). A champion of female leaders, she continues to play an influential role for women across several industries and communities globally as both a coach and mentor.

Karen is seeking opportunities to utilise her broad capabilities and expertise to help influence, drive and improve community-centric organisations at board level. As a director, Karen specialises in strengthening the board-to-executive relationship and amplifying women’s leadership, health and education agendas in Australia. As a C-Suite Coach, Karen works with executives to help create and support corporate or NFP enterprises.