Karis leverages more than 22 years of experience leading commercially pragmatic governance transformations of corporates, as a cross-border ethics, privacy and economic crime lawyer. She specializes in assisting listed international B2B and B2C businesses, private companies, startups and charities with tech/digital transformations. Karis helps her clients in (i) establishing commercially practical, benchmarked (COSO, ISO, SOX, etc.) ESG, privacy, ethics, human rights and compliance programs from scratch (ii) designing, interrogating and monitoring award-winning, efficient cross-border governance controls (covering sustainability/decarbonization, social, human and labor rights, anti-slavery, governance, economic crime and sanctions, cyber/data protection, AI, supply chain analysis, business ethics and governance and antitrust/competition issues) (iii) investigating and remediating controls breaches from corruption to cyber issues, including liaising with regulators on multinationals’ controls maturity and (iv) ESG reporting, preparing clients for promoting their ESG stance in public disclosures and tender submissions.
Prior to joining Kroll, Karis served as Chief Compliance and Data Privacy Officer and ESG Lead at Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc, the U.S. listed media owner, setting up their compliance function, reducing control gaps by 98% in five years, achieving ISS Prime ESG Rating and A minus in CDP. Before that, she set up the compliance function at TUI AG, the German-listed travel conglomerate as Group Head of Legal and Regulatory Compliance. Karis has worked as a lawyer in private practice at Debevoise LLP and Clifford Chance LLP, where clients ranged from startups to governments and international institutions.
A regular speaker on compliance, ethics and ESG at conferences and events, Karis has recently shared her expertise as a keynote speaker at Women’s White Collar Defense Association, Economic Crime Prevention Conference, ABC Minds Anti-Corruption Conference, CDO Tech Leaders, Dow Jones Institute, Compliance Week, Docusign Thought Leaders, Corporate Fraud Forum, Corporate Counsel Exchange, UN/European Commission, Brussels, Transparency International, and the WHO.
Karis has been recognized as a finalist, Legal Team of Year (2023) British Legal Awards, Winner, Outstanding Innovation & Collaboration (2022) British Legal Awards , Commended, Sustainable Best Practice Media Owner (2022) Ad Net Zero Awards, Winner, Compliance Officer of the Year (2018) Women in Compliance Awards, Winner, Compliance Innovator of the Year (2014) Thomson Reuters Awards Winner, UK Legal Team of Year (Team Leader) (2014) Modern Law Awards and Finalist, In-house Innovation of the Year (2014) British Legal Awards.
Karis holds a M.A. (Oxon) Jurisprudence from Oxford University, MSc Psychology from UEL. She also holds EU Corp Sustainability Reporting Certificate (IAS), CIPP/E in European Privacy, ACSI in Global Financial Compliance. Karis serves as a trustee on the board of Annie Lennox’s charity The Circle and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts & Sciences and the British American Project. Karis was a 2024 UN women delegate to the 68th Commission on the Status of Women.
