Speaker Details
Karen Morris
Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer, Chartis Insurance
Karen A. Morris is Chief Innovation Officer for Chartis Insurance, one of the world's largest general insurance companies.
Karen has specialized in innovation strategy and execution for many years and was instrumental in the creation of Chartis' Innovation Practice.
Her broad experience and international background in law, corporate executive management and multinational insurance underwriting inspires her insight on product, service and business model innovation. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of innovation and leadership at global forums and conferences around the world.
She is also currently an adjunct professor at Fordham University in New York teaching Innovation as part of the MBA program. She is on the Advisory Board of The Howe School of Business at The Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and is a co-founder and director of The Global Sourcing Council, a not-for-profit committed to economic and sustainable best practice in the domain of global sourcing. She is a nominated Guardian Leader of the diversity-focused leadership development and training network Guru Nation, and is also a member-elect of the prestigious International Association of Defense Counsel.
In her private capacity, Karen is currently working on a book exploring the adaptability of legacy governance, management and organizational models for the challenges of the fast, increasingly flat but nonetheless "spiky" global economies of the 21st Century.
Karen has spent over 20 years in international commercial roles. An English barrister, she began her legal career in private practice as a multi-jurisdictional tax and transactional specialist with a leading global law firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius.
Karen assumed a role as U.K. General Counsel and Divisional General Counsel for Europe with the global disposable consumer goods business, Scott Paper Company, subsequently Kimberly-Clark. As the legislative and business landscape evolved in Europe, Karen was also drawn into the fields of environmental stewardship and diversity leadership.
Karen then moved into the financial services industry where she has held both legal and commercial roles for over 14 years.
Initially entering the insurance sector in a legal role as Corporate General Counsel and Company Secretary of Chubb Insurance Company of Europe S.A. in London, Karen created a new legal advisory function dedicated to product and service innovation, focusing on trend analysis, legislative tracking, business and political developments. Specifically, Karen gained recognition as an early contributor to the passionate trans-Atlantic debate around corporate governance models, ownership and control paradigms and shareholder activism. She remains an enthusiastic member of the European Corporate Governance Institute.
The success of this venture led to Karen assuming leadership of Chubb's Specialty Lines underwriting business for the Southern European region. In 2004 she accepted a role at AIU Holdings to drive their global insurance operations' innovation and new product development activities for financial, commercial and consumer lines.
Karen holds graduate and post-graduate qualifications in English, French and Law.
She is a frequent speaker on Innovation, Sustainability Leadership, and Ethics.