Karen White
Karen is an Early Careers and Apprenticeship leader with extensive experience of setting up global programs that build diverse and talented pipelines in to organisations.
Most recently she led Early Careers Resourcing at BBC on the design and delivery of Recruitment Assessment and Selection. This encompassed 250+ Apprentices annually across 21 programs, with 50% gender, 20% ethnicity, 12% disability and 25% socio economic hiring goals.
Prior to this she built Expedia’s Early Careers program and grew hiring demand by 200% over 5 years. It grew to an intake of 400 Tech and Business Graduates, Interns and Apprentices annually across the UK, North America and Asia Pacific. She also launched the first Apprenticeship pilot programs.
Karen established Expedia’s first ever Global Graduate program for 200 participants, inclusive of rotations, performance management, compensation structure and ‘roll off’ program model. Alongside this she managed the Global Internship Program to 300 Global Interns with 78% conversion rate
Karen’s background also includes Global Graduate and Intern Programs for Barclays Capital, HSBC and Nomura.
Karen has a strong and proven skillset in educating, advising and leading on Early Careers strategies that enable organisations to build and develop the right diverse talent pipelines. She understands the challenges of navigating through large complex organisational structures and gaining stakeholder buy-in.
Her mission is to ensure career opportunities are given to every individual regardless of who they are or where they’re from and help organisations build strong talent pools for the future.
Karen lives in Canterbury Kent with her husband and 2 children but regularly commutes to London. She’s a foodie, a casual park runner and says that every quiz she’s ever taken tells her she’s a strong empath. She believes a cup of tea makes almost everything better in life.
