Following 2 years in Retail Banking, Karen spent over 17 years in the ICT industry in various roles at Ericsson, Siemens, Unisys and Cap Gemini. She has worked in many industry sectors including Finance, Telco, Commercial and Public Sector.

Karen was assigned by Cap Gemini to run the IS department at BT Mobile. She subsequently joined BT Cellnet and led their IT Operations.

Karen then joined the O2 UK Executive Board as CIO, and through a multiyear Business and IT transformation programme, helped O2 become one of the most successful mobile operators in the FTSE 100 and the extremely competitive UK Telecommunications market.

As Group CIO at Northern Foods - a UK and Ireland based food manufacturer, Karen established a new team whose remit was to build and maintain effective business relationships across the company, to help drive business growth.

Karen is currently working with Youd Andrews on programmes held in a Business Simulated Environment, to enable customer facing executives understand and develop the right skills and behaviours to operate successfully at CXO level.