Karen Guerra
Born 1956. BSc. Board member since 2008.
“Challenges are the best thing I know”
Karen Guerra, an internationally experienced company manager with more than 20 years in leading positions within Colgate-Palmolive, is now a board member at Swedish Match.
2008-05-05
When Guerra turned 50 two years ago, she began her life’s second career, switching from her role as President and General Manager for Colgate-Palmolive in France to being an adviser for several different companies. At the same time, she moved her entire family from Paris to Avignon in southern France.
“It was a very conscious decision,” she says. “I’d been working for a long time in operational management roles and felt it was time for new challenges. It is refreshing and instructive to work in a more strategic role and with many different companies, as I’m doing now.”
As well as a board member for Swedish Match, Guerra is a non-executive director of Inchcape PLC, a leading retail company within the automobile industry with operations all over the world, and an adviser to the RAC motoring organization in the UK and France.
An international perspective runs like a common thread through both Guerra’s professional career and her private life. She was born in the UK, but has worked with many countries across Europe. Her husband, who comes from Portugal, has lived and works internationally, and her son is fluent in English and French.
“You have to have respect for and understand different cultures when you work internationally,” she says. “I think culture management is extremely exciting, as is working with cultural changes. Being appointed as a British President and General Manager for the American Colgate-Palmolive Group in France – when I didn’t even speak French to begin with – was a huge cultural challenge.”
Guerra dealt with that by learning the language and also moved her entire family to Paris, where her son started in a French school. The employees saw that Karen Guerra was there to stay and that she was making an effort to understand the business and the culture.
After more than 20 years with Colgate-Palmolive, and at international groups such as PepsiCo International, Guerra has a lot of experience of fast-moving consumer goods and brand development.
“As a board member, I like to contribute with my experience of how to develop and grow global brands. Another area where I’ve worked a lot is commercial effectiveness via cross functional and multicultural teams. For my part, it will be exciting to get to know a new industry, Swedish Match and in turn, Scandinavian culture.
“Challenges are the best thing I know. The biggest professional challenge I’ve had so far was turning round the fortunes of Colgate-Palmolive in the UK, from being one of the least profitable markets in the group to one of the most profitable. The biggest private challenge was when I had four children in the space of five years: first our son and just after that three teenage stepchildren who moved from the US to be with us. It was at least as big a challenge as running a company.”