1300 314 788
Karen James
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Testimonials for Karen James
Karen’s presentation was entertaining and engaging – she’d thoroughly researched the subject matter and wove entertaining stories from her personal life into professional lessons learnt, and related them to the issues that would resonate with the Defence audience. The imagery she invoked was inspiring and relevant to the challenges we are seeking to address – and she provided plenty of laughs too!
Department of Defence
Karen is a ball of energy and fun! She gets her message across in a straightforward way that resonates well with her audience. The take-outs from the session are easy to set in to action.
Denise Myerson Management Consultancy International
Karen James is a unique speaker. In a world where many speakers have honed their art and created presentations that follow a predictable course Karen delivers from the heart. Genuinely thoughtful and curious she uses her experience in the field of engineering and her time in top echelons of the corporate world to deliver insightful messages in a way that pierces the usual language heard from the stage. Guests leave with a greater understanding of purpose and how it drives their actions and results. Karen is a professional, funny and smart speaker and I highly recommend her.
She Business
I was delighted with the work Karen performed for myself and have used this work as the centrepiece of the strategy to further improve employee engagement in my department. A key piece of work involved better defining what the purpose of the department was. Following Karen’s advice the leadership team worked together to reformulate the department purpose which has been an outstanding success. The department purpose now is punchy, has a better alignment with both the day to day work of all employees and the needs of stakeholders who rely on an effective service being provided. Most importantly employees have had much better ‘buy in’ to the new purpose.
Ian Coad Boyne Smelters Limited
Fee Range: POA
Karen James's Biography
With over 30 years of engineering and business experience, Karen’s portfolio career has moved her from New Jersey to Europe to Asia to Australia. She has since fixed networks connecting to North Sea oil rigs, designed and implemented a 600-seat virtual service centre in 12 weeks, and turned a $9M business into a $100M business early on in her career – setting the tone for her future in business: have purpose, build the right culture, and bring in amazing leaders who are, above all, human and accessible.
This same approach reaped rewards when Karen co-created a cross-cultural change program in a large corporation, based on the teachings of women in rural India. Partnering with The Hunger Project and McKinsey, she implemented a leadership-lesson program, which has directly – and measurably – changed the lives of business executives since, and its transformational ripple effect continues to make monumental personal and professional changes to this day.
At the same time Karen championed her social intrapreneurship skills to birth and grow the Women in Focus community over three years from scratch – one woman at a time. The stories within this community are often described as 'life changing' by its nationwide members – who believe that collaboration, friendship, trust and ethics is how you get ahead in business, for good.
Characterised by informed and infectious energy, with a great sense of humour, Karen pours her unique career and life experience into energetic consulting, facilitation and keynote presentations. Karen's stories are colourful and full of action-outcome responses to the questions most pertinent in business today.
With an engineer's brain, an entrepreneurial mindset, a knack for community engagement and a deeply ethical moral compass – Karen stands out for all the right reasons in a business world often filled with suits and straight faces.
From innovation to transformation to community building, Karen’s sharp intellect and a global career brings something for everyone.
Karen’s purpose is to ignite just change. Change that is just. Change for a world which needs changing, fast. Her vision is to reach many and have everyone discover the leader within so we can all work together to solve the seemingly intractable issues which our world faces.
Karen couldn't be more excited by the shift towards business for purpose. With over 30 years’ experience in purpose-driven business activities, and a tangible track record, she is an inspirational and accessible advisor to many who want to shape business for good.
Speaking Topics Include
Create, Disrupt & Innovate
Participants will:
Understand the essence of what it takes to move from transacting to relating with current and future customers.
Learn and create new mindsets, new thinking and new operating models.
Understand how to power your purpose with technology and deliver on time, on budget and on purpose programs and projects.
10 Steps To Get Your Life & Business On Purpose
Participants will:
Identify or refine their personal purpose.
Identify or refine their professional purpose.
Develop an action plan to manifest purpose through a formula based ten step approach – identifying who you need to be as a leader and most importantly how to get stuff done, on purpose.
On Purpose, The Book
Participants will:
Understand the book and discover how the PLOT framework can get their organisation, and themselves personally, living on purpose.
Experience real-world examples of the application of purpose-led organisations transforming, innovating and exceeding their goals.
Create their own plan to unleash their purpose – converting mastery, innovation and transformation into amazing meaning-driven results.
Just Change
Participants will:
Understand the true meaning of “just change”.
Learn the top questions used to challenge whether a change is just.
Understand how their personal and professional purpose and leadership has a broad impact.