Karen Connell
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Founder & Managing Director
Established in 2009, Karen Connell is the founder and principal consultant for The SMALLmighty .
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The name SMALLmighty was born from Karen witnessing first-hand the challenges of large multi-nationals. In her words “after 16 years working in industry I was just exhausted watching really smart people blame the business size for not seizing some fantastic opportunities”.
Karen’s ambition and commitment to her clients is to help restore some sense and inspiration to the world’s largest companies by helping them “think small”. With an enviable client list Karen now trains, consults and inspires leaders of large organisations so they can become more agile, responsive and mighty.
Experienced, pragmatic and not shy of a challenge, Karen has led major business development and learning programs all over the world. Her client list include the world's greatest organisations including Royal Dutch Shell, Coca-Cola, Kimberley-Clark and even The British Army. Karen's Think SMALL message has been heard in markets spanning Africa, Europe, North America, Middle East and Asia.
Cameron Watson - SHELL General Manager Global Commercial Technology - China and Asia Pacific | Chester, UK
I have worked with, and commissioned Karen on a number of Marketing projects and on Team and staff development programs. Karen has made a great impact on me and many of my team members, so much so that I am frequently requested to include her again. She balances structure and process with her own insights and experiences. She quickly builds empathy, and brings her own great sense of humour and fun to build fantastic engagement.
Dan Ingall - CEO at JWT | Asia
The Smallmighty packs a lot of punch. Karen has the ability to take the complexity of vast amounts of disjointed data, opinion, rhetoric and cultural difference and transform it into seamless, multi-stream projects that are practical and outcome-based.
An experienced and accomplished marketer, Karen understands the challenges organisations face through extensive hands-on experience that is often missing with external consultants. This enables her to drive big, multi-stakeholder teams to transform complex challenges into inspirational strategies and actionable plans. Working with The Smallmighty is fun, informative and results-driven. If [#possible] isn't Karen's handle already, it should be!
Elaine Bowers-Coventry - COCA-COLA, Chief Customer and Commercial Officer at The Coca-Cola Company | Atlanta, USA
Karen is a dynamic and focused consultant and trainer. Experienced across many industries and markets, she is quick to thoroughly assess what needs to be done while remaining respectful of the effective elements of the work that has already been completed. Conscious that people make the difference, a workshop with Karen is challenging and invigorating as she encourages people to let go of sacred cows and unleash their full talent to develop strategies that make sense for their business, customers, and careers".
Barry Thomas - Co Founder & Owner, Signature Image Atlanta Medical Spa | Atlanta, USA
Want to give a very strong recommendation for Karen who recently led an incredibly important global project for us. This was a strategic initiative that had to move fast and virtual give c19. Karen was able to innovate quickly and lead some very potent global collaboration in an agile manner across various markets leading to a successful outcome for this work.
I’d highly recommend Karen to lead all types of consulting projects especially ones around marketing, research, digital and much more.
Karen is an absolute Winner!
Major FGC Johnson - Company Commander, The Coldstream Guards, The British Army
“Karen’s colour profiling system gives a team a simple yet effective way of understanding each other. It breaks down barriers through an interactive workshop which gets personnel comfortable with understanding their colour and its attributes and that of their team mates.
Having been through the workshop with my Company I now regularly use the understanding I’ve gained about myself and that of my team to maximise team cohesion, output and morale and have already noticed positive changes.”
Michael Magee - Global Vice President Growth Acceleration at Mars, Inc. | Melbourne, Australia
Karen converts her breadth of international experience and her strong passion for success into exceptional client solutions
David Howell - Managing Director/Owner at Australasia Pacific Marketing Pty Ltd | Brisbane, Australia
Karen provided invaluable and professional marketing support directly and through her team when I was running the Virgin Drinks business in Asia. It was due to her creative capacity and drive that we successfully launched our beverage products in a number of Asian countries.
I highly recommend her..........David Howell
Kathleen Higley - Principal, Licensed Agent, Southern Properties GA LLC | Texas, USA
I had the pleasure of attending a CVP workshop Karen led several years ago, and it was the most impactful marketing workshop I have attended. The team emerged with refreshed focus for our brand, which provided clarity for the path ahead. The clarity remains 2+ years later. This sustainable focus and vision are the real sources of value Karen delivered to the business.
Carol Smith - Customer and Commercial Director, Kimberly-Clark
“As a consultant, Karen brings rare energy and insight to our brands and people, and is able to ask and answer questions that fundamentally change the trajectory of the business. With a strong understanding of research and brilliant facilitation, Karen helped our team sift through years of consumer and shopper data to find the true insights that enable cross functional stakeholders to come together and create shopper strategies and plans for all our key customers.”
Chris Guerrero - GM Marketing, Americas - Shell Energy / VP Marketing Shell New Energies US LLC | Texas, USA
As we all find ourselves and our teams managing new normals in the age of COVID, we must find innovative ways in which to work together more effectively.
Karen helped me do exactly this as we’ve just wrapped up a session with my global team on “Building Team Resilience.”
Using color profiles for my entire team, Karen was able to walk us through our preferred working styles, thinking preferences, and even responses to stress which our team may exhibit.
This helped us realize how we can more effectively work across the team as well as how we can better support each other during times of stress.
And all of this was managed through a seamless virtual process - from color assessments prior to the meeting to delivery of the outputs and facilitation of discussions via Skype.
Highly recommend The Small Mighty!
Chris Hayek - SHELL Head of Marketing Data Analytics | London, UK
We had a challenging and ambitious project to differentiate our brands further from the competitive set. Without the budget for a multi-phase / multi-technique research program we turned to The SMALLmighty for help.
Karen was instrumental in interrogating the consumer insights and taking a very large and diverse group of people on a journey that highlighted the emotional connections consumers made with highly functional brands.
Every step of the way, Karen exceeded our expectations – she is totally engaged in our business and shares our determination to reach a brilliant outcome. Methodical, transparent, inclusive, smart and creative are all characteristics of a SMALLmighty engagement.
Jo Dare - CEO at Isle of Wight Youth Trust | Isle of Wight, UK
What can I say? An amazing (and fun) day, facilitated by Karen, that will leave a very positive legacy for our Charity.
Using colour profiling Karen encouraged staff to be more self-reflective to understand themselves and their relationships better.
We are already taking what we have learnt about ourselves and each other to have more positive conversations, explore how we can better manage change throughout the organisation and build more collaboration/team building.
Thank you Karen. We are already recommending you to others.
Henry Shen - McCann Health - Chief Strategy Officer, Greater China | Shanghai, China
As the name of the company, Karen is small but all-mightly! Her service adds great value to the projects, esp. when it involves various parties from different background and disciplines, by bringing passion, clarity, and a lot of fun. I really enjoyed working with her!
Srikant Viswanath - SHELL Global Technology Manager | Karnataka, India
Karen with her mastery of color profiling, understanding the dynamics and personality types of the colors adds on her vast business management and consultancy experience to give very thoughtful insights to Senior and experienced staff. This helps them shape their teams better, fosters better team work and results in high performing teams. She is currently on this journey with the Lubricants Technology group in Shell , of which I a a part of, and has conducted various sessions for our key teams. This has helped us to manage team dynamics better and we are on the path to becoming a high performance team. Karen, look forward to your continued support in the journey. I would strongly recommend Karen's approach of color profiling and working with teams to get the best out of them. All the best in all your endeavors Karen.
George Gekas - Coles Group Ltd, Senior Product Development Manager | Melbourne Australia
I was fortunate enough to work with Karen Connell for 4 years at Virgin Drinks UK. I found her to be a dynamic Marketeer with a strong focus on the Consumer, the Client and the Brand. Combining her vast knowledge of the industry and strong communication skills allowed the business to venture into various regions across the globe.
Marcus Cotter-Stone - International Supply Director - Twinings Ovaltine | Singapore
Karen is inspirational - creative with incredible drive. Great to work with
Traci Alford - Global CEO, Effie Worldwide | New York, USA
Karen is an experience and commercially savvy marketer. Having worked with her both as a colleague as well as a consultant, her depth of knowledge combined with different industry experience gives her the ability to challenge the status quo. She puts the customer at the heart of all her insights enabling her to deliver great results. She recently work with Shell on a strategic brand project in China which was complex both internally and externally where she was able to put together a lot of moving parts to enable the local team change their way of delivering branded communications.
Celena Friday, MBA - SHELL Global Digital Marketing, Renewables & Energy Solutions - Texas, USA
I genuinely enjoyed the Profiling session Karen facilitated. While it was entirely virtual, Karen led our team through a session that required our complete engagement and ability to set aside our own defenses to look for opportunities to more ‘naturally’ connect with other ‘colors’ in an authentic way that would resonate and break through. I immediately put this into practice the following week and saw success in my ability as a ‘blue’ to better communicate with reds. I would highly recommend Karen to other organizations.
This session was well worth the time investment and the return is immediate. And, as always, you are the consummate professional delivering with such care and personality. I would recommend this to others in our organization!
Ian Benton - Founder / CEO La Chambre Paris | Paris, France
Karen has the amazing ability to inspire clients and colleagues to challenge and transform business performance. I worked with her on many projects and she has the rare ability to make the complex simple and deliver real results quickly. Karen has a great marketing ability combined with a practical commercial reality which is what makes her so valuable to the clients she works with.
Lieutenant Colonel Ed Launders - Company Commander, The Coldstream Guards, The British Army
Karen delivered a package on our Command Leadership and Management course which has helped our junior leaders get a better perspective of themselves and that of the teams they are about to lead. I highly recommend this simple yet effective system and have no doubt that it is applicable in a number of environments across the Armed Forces. I believe that it would be beneficial in training establishments and in units in the developments of individuals, teams and leaders.”