Karen has spent the last twenty years working with social enterprises in Inverness-shire and the Cairngorms National Park and currently heads up Voluntary Action in Badenoch and Strathspey, which helps support a wide range of enterprising third sector projects in the area.
Karen’s early training career started in Greece, where she lived for four years teaching English as a Foreign Language. On her return to the UK, she became a trainer in business management and lived and worked in the beautiful city of Bath for many years, before heading up to the Highlands to follow a new direction in the voluntary sector. So she clearly likes living and working in lovely places.
Her work in community development includes advising on governance and funding, especially around social enterprise and trading subsidiaries, business planning and project management, as well as carrying out ‘health checks’ and skills audits for community/voluntary organisations and working with directors to support them in fulfilling their roles and responsibilities.
She ran the Strengthening Communities Project between 2012 and 2015, which focused on developing bespoke community training and networking groups in the National Park and has been a director on various Community Development Companies operating in Scotland, including the Boat of Garten Community Hall, which was opened to the public in 2007.
Share