​Karen Carter
​Research Operations Manager, Aotearoa Clinical Trials, NZ

​Karen is a values driven leader, manager and mentor with 30+ years’ experience in clinical research in the UK and NZ. She has managed both pharma and investigator-initiated research trials. Her passion for research stems from being at the forefront of science and making a difference to health and wellbeing outcomes.  She started in clinical trials as a Research Nurse working on some early HIV trials and was immediately hooked. Her career has spanned nursing, project management, monitoring, auditing, and management. She is currently the Research Operations Manager at Aotearoa Clinical Trials. Karen attended the first NZACRes conference and is extremely excited to be invited to speak this year. She says ‘the NZACRes conference is a great opportunity to keep up to date with the industry, re-connect with colleagues and meet new people from across the sector'. 

---

Operational Excellence and Quality: A Site Perspective

​Building and maintaining a trusted partnership between the Site, Sponsor and CRO, where accountabilities and responsibilities are clear and met, is key to attaining operational excellence and quality at research sites. The speaker will discuss four pillars to achieving operational excellence: company leadership and culture; quality; education, and training; process, systems, and technology. She will also share the process and output of Aotearoa Clinical Trial’s Operations Team two-year strategic plan to highlight how they are working towards operational excellence and quality.