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Karen Lawson

Chief Executive Officer, CareerOne

Karen Lawson is a senior executive and leader in the digital industry. She has held senior positions within both global companies, as well as joint ventures.

With experience leading teams through change; motivating, developing cross functional teams to peak performance, Karen is extremely passionate about delivering great results and helping others achieve their true potential.

Karen is also a prolific networker, an experienced media commentator and guest speaker, with appearances on TV, radio in print and digital, as well as industry forums.

In early 2013, Karen was appointed CEO of CareerOne, a joint venture between News Limited and Monster Worldwide. This followed her role as General Manager – Business Development at Yahoo7! where she held full commercial and operational responsibility for data, advertising, publishing, technology, search mobile and strategic partnerships, including the Microsoft Bing alliance. Whilst CareerOne was Australia’s number two job board, the employment market was increasingly challenged with new models emerging. With a remit to forge a new digital strategy CareerOne launched as a new business early in 2014 creating headlines all over the world.

Its ‘Beyond the Job Board’ strategy, restructured the business from a traditional job board, into a leading targeting and digital business offering media, employer branding, cloud technology and sourcing solutions. Within a few months its world leading off-network targeting solution – Digital HeadHunter over took the revenues from traditional job board listings.

BRW Magazine quoted this turnaround as follows: “CareerOne is no longer second to SEEK in the recruitment advertising market – not because it’s caught up, but because it has redefined the market it is in”

CareerOne has since gone on to be awarded a spot in the coveted BRW ‘Top 50 most innovative companies’ list for 2014. BRW recognised the way CareerOne’s Digital Head Hunter technology changed their value proposition and enabled diversification of its customer base.

Karen is a huge ‘foodie’ and has been a food and luxury travel journalist for over eight years, writing for a diverse range of on and offline publishers. She doesn’t have holidays, but has research and writing trips! To balance this out she is an avid runner having completed both New York and London Marathons, though these days she is more likely to be seen jogging around Blackwattle Bay at a much more sedate pace!