Women in Tech Mentoring Program


Karen Rai

Director of Business Development

Karen Rai obtained a 1st Ba Hon in Software & Business Management from the University of Leeds, UK, in 2005, and respectively, completed her master’s in Business Law in 2010.
Between 2011 and 2018, Karen Rai started her career at McKinsey New Ventures as a business transformation consultant covering various change management and transformational programmes across commercial and business sectors.
In 2017 she was certified across as a specialist in multiple project and business methodologies across operating and delivery models.
Karen Rai has had a distinguished career, one that has seen her receive awards in Leadership and Business Awards across 2013 and 2015, recognising her as a trailblazer across national and international business.
In 2014 Karen Rai was appointed associate lead for the Global Fund for women, where she played a pivotal role securing $10 million to support movements advancing human rights for women and girls across multiple service developments and redesign initiatives.
Her natural ability to develop innovate ideas and manifest them into spinouts saw a rise across 2015 as she acquired $11.74 billion for a transformational programme across Ester Lauder.
In 2018 she qualified in her NPL practitioner through the NLP Association of Excellence, specialising neuro linguistic programming where she developed and redesigned commercial and business models for major companies across the FTSE 100.
Her passion to develop innovate ideas and manifest them into spinouts saw her career heightened between 2017 and 2018, when she supported the Adecco Group based in Zurich-Glattbrugg, Switzerland, a Fortune Global 500 company listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and one of the largest
resourcing and recruitment companies in the world.
As the appointed Director of Operations for Ajilon, her successes in strategic planning led her to take this newly formed spinout company specialising in technology services across the UK. Karen Rai designed a hybrid business and commercialisation model adopted across design, implementation,
and technological solutions across the technology markets.
Karen Rai has always been passionate about leadership and transformational programmes offering growth opportunities. Her skills across portfolio management, cross team collaboration has successful led 250 FTE across satellite teams.
And as part of her Scrum Master Training she formed and led the creation of a shared services commercial model across First Group PLC in 2017, supporting the board to achieve Investors in People platinum certification while undergoing a national capital and infrastructure programme
worth £12 million .
In 2019 as she completed her Six Sigma Black Belt Certification, Karen Rai took a career break after the traumatic loss of her first pregnancy and the end of her relationship.
As part of her career break and therapy, Karen Rai entered the health sector, working in various roles in research and education while continuing to provide business consultancy to KPMG as Associate Director of Development.
In 2019 she was appointed at as Strategic Research & Innovation Manager for The Christie Hospital providing strategic direction on service design and redesign across research and innovation. This led to her working relationship with globally renowned medical oncologist Prof Andrew Wardley.
In October 2020 she became the Business Partner and Director for Business Development for Outreach Research & Innovation Group, an oncology site management business aimed at improving health inequalities through service redesign and development.
In a intensive 12 week entrepreneurial sprint project she successfully led a team of volunteers in acquiring £100k partnership deal with The University of Manchester the Manchester Breast Centre and Action Against Cancer, for a programme exploring research across HER2+ type breast cancer patients whose tumours are not responding to treatment. She successfully positioned the newly formed start up in a strategic partner for the Better Health Programme (BHP), a Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) funded international development programme focused on 8 middle-income countries securing partnerships across 4 out of the 8 low to middle countries. In November 2020 she closed the 12 week intensive project by establishing form foundation across the 4 pillars of the business, placing Outreach Research & Innovation Group as the leading oncology site management organization in the UK, with presence across Wales and Scotland.
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