Karen has worked in the development sector for more than 20 years, promoting the rights and opportunities of diverse persons with and without disabilities (underpinned by a human rights and empowerment approach to disability inclusion and gender equality). She has sector experience in children, adolescent and youth participation; sexual reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence, disability-inclusive humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction, livelihoods and women’s economic empowerment, and community-based rehabilitation and initiatives. Her technical expertise lies in organisational capacity development; participatory learning processes and training; barrier and power analyses; monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, and research. She applies an intersectional lens across all her work and has particular interest in transformative programmes working on changes in social norms and power dynamics, favouring an equity-focused inclusive and feminist approach that enables meaningful participation of women, youth and children in making decisions for their lives.

Karen has worked internationally and in the UK with a wide range of international NGOs (e.g. CBM, Plan International, HelpAge, VSO, Elrha), OPDs, governments, and multilateral agencies (e.g. World Bank, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, UNICEF and the Caribbean Development Bank). Karen has provided helpdesk functions for UN Women and Save the Children across thematic and technical areas, developed toolkits and training of trainers, and led inclusive and participatory methodologies on gender and disability for national disability assessments and monitoring systems. Karen has led peer research on gender-based violence and disability and has run numerous trainings on the intersection of gender and disability. She has written thematic briefs, synthesis reviews, learning papers and inclusion guidelines, conducted programme and project evaluations, and facilitated the development of organisational MEL frameworks and Theories of Change.