Karen obtained her Master’s degree, Cum Laude, in Business Mathematics and Informatics from North-West University in 2004. As part of her Master's degree she was responsible for the development of a Basel II compliant Loss Given Default model for Nedbank.Her previous work experience includes an analytical role within the Analytics division of TransUnion, an international credit bureau operating in South Africa. Thereafter, she moved to the credit division of Real People where she assisted in establishing this division within the Real People Group. Her next role was as a founding member and General manager of the analytics division of XDS, another major credit bureau. She re-joined Real People in 2012 to head up the Group Analytics division. Here she served on numerous committees of strategic importance. These included the group extended executive committee, group credit approvals forum, analytics executive committee, the innovation forum and various divisional company management boards.An opportunity to move to Cape Town saw her taking up the role of Divisional Manager in the Risk and Analytics team at Truworths where she was responsible for the development of predictive models for decision areas across the full credit life cycle. She supported both Truworths and Office (UK) with analytical projects and was the main driver behind the company's migration of their analytical data assets and models to the SAS Viya platform. Currently, she is looking after the Decision Science area at BluNOVA - a subsidiary of the Blue Label group.She is particularly skilled in using statistical tools, predominantly SAS, to develop and maintain descriptive and predictive models that can assist the business in making informed decisions. She has a strong data background – having worked extensively on bureau and consumer data throughout her career.The consultative nature of her work has provided her with extensive exposure in major industries including credit bureaux, personal finance, telecommunications, debt collection and retail.