Karren Brady began her career at Saatchi & Saatchi when she was 18 years old and swiftly moved onto LBC as junior Account Executive.
Karren is now known as the first woman in football. She was Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club from 1993 - 2009 and turned the Club’s fortunes around. She took over Birmingham City when it was in administration, and in her first year at the helm, the Club recorded a financial trading profit. In 1996 the Club made an overall profit for the first time in modern history and in February 1997 the Club launched on the Stock market valued at the time of float at £25,000,000; she was the youngest Managing Director of a PLC in the UK. During the past years Karren has increased the average gate of the Club from 6,000 to a sell out capacity of over 30,000. In 2007 her business was valued at over £60million.
Karren has attracted much media attention in her position, and was the subject of an hour long documentary ‘Inside Story’ - The Real Life Manageress’ shown on BBC 1. She has hosted her own TV show, Brady Bunch, and has also presented both Loose Women and Live Talk on ITV and she has also presented Central Weekend Live. She is regularly featured in the news, on TV and radio. Karren has written four books; a factual account of her first season at Birmingham City, ‘Brady plays the Blues’ two novels, ‘United’ and ‘Trophy Wives’ and her latest book ‘Playing to Win’ is about successful women in business.
Karren is a columnist for The Sun newspaper; the UK’s biggest selling national daily newspaper, The Evening Mail in Birmingham, and The Guardian. She is a judge of the Cosmopolitan Women of Achievement Awards and the Sports Industry Awards. She is on the business Board of Scope, and the Ambassador for Birmingham Women’s Aid.
Karren is Chairman of Kerrang! (EMAP), and a Board Director of Mothercare PLC, Channel 4 Television and Sport England. She is an honoree Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing. She was voted by Cosmopolitan as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world and in 2004 and again in 2006 attended The Queen’s lunch for Women Achievers and Business Leaders. She was acknowledged as one of the most influential women in Britain by the Daily Mail and voted as one of Britain’s Most Inspirational Women by Good Housekeeping magazine. In November 2006 she won the Cosmopolitan Woman of the Year, in the category of Women Who Have Changed the World.
In March 2006 she was chosen as the team leader on BBC1’s The Apprentice, for Comic Relief, where she lead her team (Trinny Woodall, Jo Brand, Cheryl Cole and Maureen Lipman) to a resounding victory over the boys team (Alistair Campbell, Piers Morgan, Rupert Everett, Danny Baker and Ross Kemp) raising over £750k (the two teams together raising £1million for charity)
In December 2007 Karren was a guest on Desert Island Discs and February 2007 will see the launch of Karren Brady’s ‘Today’s Business Woman’ magazine.
In October 2007 Karren was voted Business Woman of the Year.
In 2008 Karren won the coveted NatWest Sprit of Everywoman Award. In November 2008, Karren was named as one of the top leadership role models in a national poll. Karren is currently presenting a series of features for ITV1's GMTV called Just the Job, helping people back into work, and giving advice about looking for and retaining your job in this uncertain economic climate.
Karren has just been announced as the new ‘eyes and ears’ for Lord Sugar in the next series of ‘The Apprentice’ replacing Margaret Mountford.
