Karen Oldaker is a senior executive with over 20 years’ experience across ASX-listed organisations, specialising in People, Culture and organisational capability. A safety professional first and foremost, she has led large-scale transformations across workforce strategy, leadership development and enterprise-wide capability uplift.

Karen is known for thoughtfully challenging traditional thinking, particularly the idea that safety can be separated from how organisations lead, support and manage their people. While her roots are firmly in safety, she’s stepped into the People and Culture space to help bridge the gap between operational risk and how work is actually experienced on the ground.

For this debate, Karen is stepping up for Team HR, bringing a safety practitioner’s perspective to the conversation and arguing that People and Culture is not a handbrake on safety, but an important part of getting it right.