Karen Velasco is a performance management consultant specialising in the HR and IT fields.
She has worked in a variety of training, development and leadership roles for almost twenty years. Over the years Karen has worked with many prestigious clients, including the AA, British Gas, Centrica, Microsoft, BP, HBOS, Nationwide and a selection of public sector organizations.
Karen’s approach to business combines a passion for life-long learning with a pragmatic desire to achieve measurable business benefits. She has helped to revolutionize companies and increase their profitability through techniques that generate transformational change at both the individual and organizational level.
Karen has experience of working within a variety of environments and sectors including major corporate organizations, local government, higher education, health services and charities. She has experience of working globally within a range of cultures – delivering training events and coaching people on five continents. Her practical experience of working with people from varied cultures is immense.
Practices
Karen is a professional and highly skilled senior management consultant, with experience of working within high-technology environments at a strategic level. She possesses a wide range of knowledge and skills in performance consultancy, learning, management, organisational change and development and IT. Her proven leadership skills involve managing, developing and motivating teams to achieve objectives, and in the instigation of culture change initiatives. Karen is dedicated to the advancement of lifelong learning and the furthering of innovative methods in education and training. For over ten years Karen was a training and development manager within the Centrica group, specialising within the IT field. She was instrumental in winning the coveted Training Department of the Year award at the IT Training Awards, and one of the trainers she coached was voted Trainer of the Year.
Karen’s recent projects include developing and delivering a variety of programmes including organisational and cultural change, performance management consulting, executive coaching, leadership and management development, facilitation and teambuilding.
Professional Affiliations
Karen is a director and Company Secretary of the British Learning Association and immediate past Chairman of the Forum for Technology in Training. She is a governor and non-executive director of the University of Chichester.
Karen is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Institute of IT Training; and a Member of the Institute of Management Consultancy and Institute of Directors.
Karen has a first degree in Geography, and is currently completing an Executive MBA at the University of Portsmouth, where her research project is on spirituality in the workplace.
She is qualified to administer 16PF and Myers Briggs psychometric tests, and is a certified trainer of neuro-linguistic programming.
Personal Interests
Karen is passionate about all aspects of development and when not working, or studying for her MBA, Karen loves spending time with her family at home near Portsmouth or in their converted vine-workers cottage in the south of France.