In her role as the Senior Director of People at Quantifind, Karen plays a pivotal role in fostering leadership, supporting women in the industry, and leveraging AI and data analytics to drive innovation in risk management.
In this leadership spotlight, we explore her career journey, the challenges and successes she has encountered, and the transformative impact of initiatives like Women in Risk (WIRE), Quantifind’s internal program dedicated to empowering women in risk. She also shares how technological advancements are shaping her approach and offers invaluable advice for women aspiring to leadership roles in financial crime and risk intelligence.
Let’s dive into her insights on leadership, innovation, and building a strong community of support in the ever-evolving world of risk intelligence.
What inspired you to pursue a career in risk intelligence, and how has your role at Quantifind shaped your perspective on financial crime?
As an Organizational Psychologist my driving force is my desire to grow and develop people and their organizations to their maximum potential. It was important to me to focus my work on developing people in a field that would positively impact society. Risk intelligence is a noble and important field that fulfills my personal goal of growing the right people who are supporting the right causes.
Can you share a significant achievement in your career that had a direct impact on other women in risk?
As a complement to our external WIRE program supporting women in the field of risk intelligence, Quantifind has also developed an internal WIRE program. Through WIRE, I have been able to directly connect with all the women of Quantifind to understand their individual needs for growth. This enables me to work one-on-one with a number of our team to develop action plans to grow their career, whether through coaching, on the job development, mentorship or a step-by-step plans to identify and dissolve any hurdles in their path. It’s exciting for me to be a part of this process and witness the development of these incredible women.
How have technological advancements, like AI and data analytics, influenced your approach to leading your department?
It is almost impossible to work at Quantifind, surrounded by innovative leaders in Data Science and AI, and not contemplate how to incorporate AI and data analytics into the work that we do on the People team. We already routinely approach areas such as compensation, benefit and recruiting efforts by researching best practices, internal and external data points. We are taking steps into adopting AI tools to develop and streamline the work that we do on my team. More to come in 2025!
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a leader in your field, and how have those experiences shaped your approach?
One of the challenges I am working to tackle with my leaders is how to continue to educate and grow Quantifind’s people in AI. As we all can see in the world around us, Artificial Intelligence is a rapidly evolving field. We have some of the best and brightest people in the world working to develop Quantifind’s AI tools and we want to make sure the team is constantly growing and learning so that we can continue to lead the way in risk intelligence. My team is excited by this challenge and we continue to brainstorm the ways we stay atop the latest research and developments in AI.
What advice would you give to women aspiring to lead in risk management roles and related fields?
My advice is to build your own community of supporters. This is a group of people that you have cultivated. It can consist of friends, family, coworkers, or anybody who comes into your life. Find people to add to your community who will advocate for you. Find more than one member of your community who will mentor you. Create a community for yourself that you can lean on. One that you can productively vent your challenges to in an effort to solve those obstacles.
Your community is the group that will pull you up when things are difficult, they will remind you why you are doing what you are doing and motivate you to keep going, they will celebrate your wins with you. With a strong support network you will feel empowered to make bolder decisions and pursue bolder paths, making a greater impact in your career and community.