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Karena-Vaughan
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Karena Vaughan

Group Lead, Tech Belfast Advocates

As well as founding and leading Tech Belfast Advocates, Karena is an expert in strategic business development with > 20 years’ sales experience in Financial & Professional Services & Technology. Karena works with high-growth companies, providing practical support with fundraising, new customer acquisition, sales process optimisation and business location-selection.

Recent projects include leading Regtech company Funds Axis, Data specialist Think Evolve Solve, Wealthtech start-up 1fs:Wealth and AI start-up Fregnan.

Prior to this, as Regional Director, Europe & Russia with Invest NI, Karena led on large-scale expansion projects with IQ-EQ,  Estera, FinTrU, Barclays Supply Chain, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Convergys, EE, Robo-Advisor Moola, Allen & Overy, Herbert Smith Freehills, Axiom Law, MITIE and Alexander Mann.

And as Sales Director with boutique learning company Edge, Karena delivered multi-location sales and leadership training programmes for Caterpillar, Thomson Reuters, HP and Coca-Cola. Karena’s team also trained >400 SME export sales managers.

Karena’s early career was spent with BT and Xerox (UK) Limited working on complex projects in outsourced managed services and technical support.

Karena holds an MBA, MA and B.Ed (Hons). She is a PRINCE2 Practitioner. She has completed;

  • Building Businesses in Emerging Markets, Harvard Business School
  • Chartered Institute of Securities & Investment;
    • Introduction to Securities & Investment
    • International Certificate in Wealth & Investment Management