Karen leads the trusts’ Business Support Team, which focuses on supporting all our schools with various aspects of the ‘business side’ of running a school. This is mainly related to the school budgets and how they are allocated and overlaps into working closely with the Finance, HR and Payroll, Procurement, Estates and Institute of Education colleagues, who are the specialist teams.

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Following a long and successful career in banking, Karen started her education career working in the office at Birchwood Primary School in 2000 and progressed with qualifications to become the School Business Manager.

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In 2012, when Birchwood was one of the founding schools of the Trust, Karen worked closely with the team at Polesworth to make the formation of the Trust a success and relocated to a Trust role as Primaries Business Manager soon after, assisting with the conversion of schools joining our trust. Karen feels privileged to work with such a great team across the trust to ensure that our schools are able to provide excellent education and experiences to the pupils in a wide range of demographics. Karen is a strong believer in education for the whole person and not just academia, allowing all individuals to fulfil their talents, encourage them, and be open to everyone. This is one of the reasons Karen likes working for our Trust, as this is at the heart of its ethos.