Karen Brooks

Karen has worked for the SETsquared Partnership in senior management for twenty years. She led the team that developed the World’s number one University Incubation Programme which has provided support to over 5,000 early-stage technology companies which have raised over £3.8bn in investment. Karen has developed the SETsquared enterprise brand for the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton, and Surrey which has provided over £8.6bn of economic impact to the UK economy. 

Karen has developed numerous experiential training programmes to allow participants to develop entrepreneurial thinking and form credible business propositions from the seeds of an idea in a range of sectors. She has been involved in start-up weekends, appathons, pitching competitions and researcher to innovator programmes and developed programmes for the UK Space Agency, Royal Academy of Engineering, Academic Health Science Network and InnovateUK and has headed up ICURe delivery team for SETsquared. Karen has sat on the judging panel for many business pitch competitions in the UK and overseas and seen thousands of companies pitch for investment. Currently Karen is championing ESG/Impact understanding within SETsquared’s academic and SME community and female researchers as innovators and founders.

Karen has also worked for Motorola and Compass Group in strategic communications and project management roles. She has over 30 years of marketing, communications and PR experience in a range of industries including IT, Telecoms and FMCG. Karen holds a degree in Computer Science, foundation in Psychotherapy and is PRINCE2 qualified.