2022 Global Leaders in Consulting: Karen Briggs

Karen Briggs is a Senior Managing Director and Head of EMEA Forensic & Litigation Consulting and Technology at FTI Consulting in London. She leads a multidisciplinary team of experts across EMEA, working closely with FTI Consulting's global community of more than 1,000 forensic professionals to help clients navigate their most complex issues. She has wide experience of forensic, regulatory, financial crime and investigation work, having led many high-profile complex global matters during her 30-plus year career.

Ms. Briggs was a Big 4 Partner for 20 years before joining FTI Consulting and held a variety of senior leadership roles in the UK and globally, including two years as an Executive Committee Board Member. She was seconded to the Bank of England's Special Investigations Unit for two years, became Head of Bank Investigations when The FSA (now FCA) was formed, and sat as an Advisor to the Board of Banking Supervision. Ms. Briggs has led large regulatory and fraud investigations in investment and retail banks, insurers and other regulated entities which involved evidence gathering and analysis, complex data and analytics, interviews, liaison with multiple regulators and criminal authorities and formal reporting. These included major OFAC sanctions compliance investigations and reports to multiple regulators concerning fraud investigation, money laundering and miss-selling

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

My biggest achievement was becoming an equity partner in a Big 4 professional services firm. I was the first person in my family to attend university and work in the professional services world, so starting a career in this field was in itself a significant milestone. Moreover, there were very few women in the industry at that time. This meant that I had to be very purposeful in how I moved my career forward, including making sure my voice was heard and working around assumptions that my career would end when I had children. These barriers made earning partnership in a major global company especially rewarding.

What advice would you give a professional just beginning a career in consulting?

Get enthusiastically engaged! Consulting in any industry offers a lot of opportunities to learn and gain unique professional experience. It's important to immerse yourself in that to build your network—including work/client-related connections and networks of supporters and mentors.

Also, every company and manager ask their people to set goals for their role, but I think people also need to have broader, individual goals for their careers. Planning and having an actionable vision makes the prospect of getting where you want to be in one, three, five or more years from now much more realistic.

What have you loved most about your consulting career?

Variety and collaboration. I'm a naturally curious person, and consulting has given me the opportunity to go places, meet people and work on projects I would never have dreamed of—like working with clients and regulators across the globe carrying out investigations and developing risk frameworks as well as leading global teams across Europe, in China, Japan, the U.S., Australia and the Caribbean, to name a few. I love the variety of working across different countries, topics and industries.

Consulting also leads to collaboration with amazing people from different cultures and walks of life. I feel so lucky to learn from others' diverse experiences and collaborate to solve tough problems. This mindset and culture of teamwork is also what stands out about our teams at FTI Consulting. It's how we have motivated each other to think about technology as part of everything we do and continue innovating from that viewpoint.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

A previous fellow partner once told me to make sure to take all my holidays. It's great advice because nobody can be successful over the long term if they work, work, work all the time. We all need to take breaks and take care of our own mental health and well-being. Those of us in leadership positions have a responsibility to lead by example on this, so our colleagues and junior employees have role models that reinforce the importance of balance.

What does being honored as a Global Leader mean to you?

I'm quite humbled and surprised to have been selected given all the talented people who have received this award. For me, this recognition spurs me on to keep moving forward—for the growth of our business and for creating a remarkable workplace for our people. I want to leverage this as an opportunity to keep influencing and impacting career opportunities for other women and diverse talent, and to keep pushing the boundaries on what we can achieve.