Karen Horcher is an experienced board director, committee chair, and board chair. A financial leader with a career in treasury and institutional finance, she has advised and trained fellow professionals in treasury, banking, and finance. As a consultant, she has worked with multinational corporations, financial regulators, and financial institutions throughout North America.

Prior to consulting, Karen worked for some of the world’s largest banks, including MUFG and Barclays, in global transaction banking and capital markets. She traded and actively managed positions in foreign exchange, interest rates, and money markets with P&L responsibility. She traded as a market-maker including related derivatives such as forwards, options, and swaps. She also advised large corporations and governments on their hedging strategies, debt issuance, and financial risk management.

Since 2005, Karen has worked with significant organizations to support mitigation of financial risk, streamline treasury processes including wholesale payments. Her projects include treasury technology, payment fraud prevention, treasury controls, and cross-border cash consolidation and liquidity management. She has also provided her expertise to financial regulators and in legal cases.

As an educator, she has shared her knowledge with financial and accounting professionals through workshops, presentations, and keynote presentations to national and international groups. She taught for the Treasury Management Association of Canada and was a faculty member of the Treasury Management executive program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Kenan-Flagler Business School from 2013 to 2020.

Since 2004, Karen has served on several significant boards, including federal and provincial Crown corporations, a regulator, and a NFP foundation. She has experience as a board chair and chairing audit and finance committees. She is the past board chair of the Chartered Professional Accountants of BC, the regulator for 40,000 CPAs and 6,000 CPA students. A diligent and ethical director, she chaired her board’s cybersecurity committee following a high-profile attack. She has HR experience, having successfully hired for the CEO role, as well as providing advice for the CFO role. Karen is a CPA and was elected to Fellowship (FCPA) in 2017. She is also a CFA charter holder and holds the ICD.D credential. She is the author of Essentials of Financial Risk Management and Essentials of Managing Treasury, both published by Wiley in New York.