Karen Cairney

Founder & CEO

An experienced and established professional in the higher education, not-for-profit and fundraising sectors, Karen has worked as a senior-level professional in the charitable and educational sectors for over 30 years in Canada, US, Asia and the UK. She has experience working in a variety of different sectors including health, education, arts, environment and social services.

Karen has led and implemented multimillion figure campaigns, and strategic and fundraising planning for the organisations and clients she has managed. She has also led significant programmes of change with a focus on staff and individual development initiatives. Karen is an Executive Coach, working with individuals and teams to maximise their performance.

Over her career, Karen has personally raised over £200m for the organisations and clients she has served. She has extensive expertise in campaign and major gift solicitations, managing volunteers, working with senior management teams and boards, coaching and leadership, and strategy.

Karen established Cairney & Company 9 years ago, and our clients span across the globe from the UK to Australia as well as Hong Kong, China, and North America. Some of the institutions that C&C have advised include the Universities of Oxford, Deakin, ECU (Perth) Glasgow, UCL, Edinburgh and St Andrews as well as international search firm Perrett Laver, UNICEF and Breast Cancer Now.

While studying for and achieving a distinction in her MBA in 2011 from Edinburgh Napier University, Karen led their inaugural £100m campaign. This demonstrated a unique and bespoke approach to campaign execution, focusing not only on philanthropic opportunities but also on leveraging and creating opportunities from commercial and research sources. This campaign exceeded its goal and changed the face of income generation for the University.

Karen is a regular industry speaker at CASE and other industry forums and is a recipient of the prestigious CASE Crystal Apple Award for excellence in teaching, as well as being a CASE Laureate.