Endorsement Summary
LinkedIn & Other Recommendations
Additional Recommendations
Bias to action. Listens to customers
I had the pleasure of working with Karen after being asked to lead the coaching success team. Karen exhibited strong partnership and strategic thinking skills. Her bias for action and motivation to continue to elevate our solutions was compelling. Karen took time to listen to her constituents and was realistic about gaps and creative with solutions that moved the needle. I loved seeing the fruit of her efforts in a short period of time. I am excited to offer my recommendation and to watch for the contributions Karen makes next.
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~Tracey Hannah, Director of Customer Success, Skillsoft colleague
Karen and I worked together at ITHAKA for three years across the marketing and sales groups. She was a delight to work with and I can confidently say that her expertise and poise shines through constantly. Her willingness to collaborate and share knowledge across multiple departments at the organization proved invaluable. She is an effective leader and a wonderful addition to any team.
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~Lenny Sydney Adler, Senior Account Development Manager, US/Canada ITHAKA (JSTOR, Artstor, Portico) colleague
Effective leader across teams
Highly effective ideas & campaigns
I had the pleasure of working with Karen for three years at ITHAKA. Her deep knowledge of the library market and close collaboration with our product and sales teams enabled her to develop highly effective marketing strategies. Plus, you can always count on her for creative ideas and input on marketing campaigns - I miss brainstorming with her!
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~Valerie Yaw, Senior Marketing Manager, ITHAKA Direct Report
Curious, creative, industrious, continuous learner
Karen is curious, creative, and industrious. She is full of ideas, she knows the industry inside out, and she never stops learning. And not least, she's a very nice person to work with!
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~Giovanni Garcia-French, Brand and Content Strategist, ITHAKA colleague
Customer-focused. Bridges Sales & Marketing
Karen and I work together at ITHAKA; and enjoy a very collaborative relationship. She is always incredibly engaged and eager to find ways of bridging the gap between outreach (sales) and marketing. Karen can be counted on to listen to new ideas, and to share ideas of her own. Her understanding of the sales process is a real strength that she brings to the marketing team. She can easily engage with customers and present information in a very practical customer-focused way. Karen is a true professional, and a pleasure to have on any team.
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~Jane Hetherington, Sales Director, ITHAKA colleague
Conveys ideas with elegant simplicity
Karen's creative thinking and purposeful energy help teams think through ways to target messaging and convey complex ideas with elegant simplicity.
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~Dana Howard, Sr. Education Manager, Customer Success, ITHAKA colleague
Ideas & result-impacting messaging
I worked with Karen as part of a cross-functional team developing a key new strategic outreach program. I was impressed with her ability to contribute creative ideas for programming and to establish engaging and informative messaging that encouraged the kind of action desired. This messaging successfully balanced the educational and marketing aspects of the program goals and certainly resulted in a wider overall participation.
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~Chris Martire, Community Manager, OCLC colleague
Other Recommendations
Bright. Creative yet pragmatic
"Karen is one of the brightest individuals I've had the pleasure to work with. She managed some of the highest performing products at ProQuest when I worked with her and was viewed as a rock star in our business unit because she knows how to drive growth and deliver what customers seek. Her approach is creative yet pragmatic, a mix that is not found in many individuals, and she would be a great addition to any team because she knows how to deliver results, drive higher customer satisfaction, and work collaboratively across internal teams to deliver the best solutions possible."
~​Sue Hunter, VP of Strategy, CQL, ProQuest/Clarivate colleague
"Karen is a thought leader in the development of business strategies. She leverages marketing performance insights in the creation and development of her product concepts. In my department, I did not have the luxury of using traditional KPIs to measure performance. Karen taught me how to think creatively about things such as ROI, MQL, and conversions, which resulted in measurable and actionable outputs for our business. This creative thinking helped me develop business plans which improved under-performing functions of our business."
~Mike Sollars, Sr. Business Development & Relations Manager, Gale/Cengage direct report, colleague at ITHAKA
Thought leader who leverages insights
Proactive in introducing new processes
"Karen McKeown was my manager at Gale from 2017 to 2018. In her role as Director of Discovery and Analytics, she oversaw several major strategic initiatives focused around new market opportunities for Gale, including around our primary source collections and open web initiatives. Karen’s understanding and connections within the academic library industry and community were indispensable to our team in those efforts. Her position overseeing new product development (and the market-focus and study that required) would make her a tremendous asset in any marketing team. Karen was very proactive in introducing new processes (including Google Design Sprints) to our team and creating strong cross-team relationships across our organization. She helped design and guide multiple rounds of market and user research within Gale, and beyond being a great manager and mentor, I found her to be an open and creative collaborator. I strongly recommend her for the role.”​
~Bess Anderson, Sr. Manager, Design Research, Cisco. Gale/Cengage direct report
Knack for building relationships to find solutions
“I've always really enjoyed work with Karen on industry initiatives. I appreciated the clear, strategic eye and professionalism she brought to our work together on ODI. She jumped into a group that had been working together for a few years and brought a breath of optimistic fresh air to our challenges. I've admired her knack at building relationships and ability to bridge gaps to find solutions. I trust she’'d be an asset to any product team!”
~Lettie Conrad, co-chair, NISO Open Discovery Initiative, Publishing and Product Development Consultant, Product Experience Architect, Senior Advisor DeepDyve, colleague at Maverick, long time industry relationship/mentor
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