Amazing Starts With: Karen

Name: Karen

Role: Corporate Responsibility Manager

Location: Head Office, Watford

Time at Camelot: 16+ years!

What’s your Camelot story?

I have worked in lots of different teams during my 16+ years at Camelot such as Player Services, Security Operations and the Draw Team, where I was a Broadcast Manager on the late ‘Daily Play’ (one of my highlights was putting the white gloves on to be ‘Draw Master Karen Collins’!). I now work in the CR (Corporate Responsibility) team where my main priority is protecting National Lottery players (e.g. from playing too much or too young), alongside other CR initiatives such as managing our employee volunteer programme, Living Life Changing.

Why Camelot?

Camelot was recommended to me by a great friend who used to work in the Treasury team and I have never looked back!

What does your current role entail?

The number one priority for the CR team is to make sure that our games are enjoyed safely by our players. We work to ensure that National Lottery games are low-risk and continue to explore new ways of preventing problem play, whether that’s excessive or underage play. We also support the business by collaborating with other teams to be the most responsible business we can be, whether that's encouraging colleagues to volunteer, reducing our environmental impact, ensuring that we have a diverse and inclusive workforce, or working to achieve transparent and sustainable supply chains.

What skills help you succeed in this role?

To be a great CR Manager at Camelot you need to be passionate about the topic, good at developing relationships and an enthusiastic learner that’s able to prioritise whilst also being articulate.

What’s the most exciting thing about working at Camelot?

As an employee, we get lots of opportunities to visit National Lottery-funded projects and the most exciting one for me was being at the London 2012 Olympics seeing Usain Bolt run the 200m final and the closing ceremony… a day and a night I will never forget!

What makes your proud to work for Camelot?

The biggest thing has to be knowing that we raise on average around £30M each week for Good Causes - 525,000 individual grants have been made across the UK (that’s 185 per UK postcode) so it really doesn’t take long to find one near you which is most definitely something to shout about!

If you didn’t work at Camelot, what would be your dream job?

That’s a hard question to answer but I do know that I’m very much a people person that loves to get creative so my dream job would need to include those two traits.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

It's the classic answer… I like to keep fit by running and working out. My love is to travel with friends and family which has led to the nickname ‘Holiday Karen’!