Karenina Schröder

Karenina Schröder joined the Wider Sense’s executive team in October 2020. She brings over 20 years of experience from leadership positions in many different sectors of civil society. Her content focus is on strategy development, change processes, impact and scaling of social engagement. With her experience in the national and international NGO and foundation landscape, Karenina can draw on a broad network of partners that has developed over the years. Her thematic expertise includes among other education, sustainability transformation, and corporate citizenship. At Wider Sense, Karenina supports our clients particularly with regard to the strategic development of organizations and programs to increase their positive impact for people and nature.

Initially, Karenina worked as an art consultant for 10 years. At the interface of large companies and progressive international artists she helped realize a number of high-profile art works integrated into new company settings. This was followed by 7 years on the board of Transparency International Germany, where she led a strategy process, published a book on corruption with Prof. Peter Graeff, and launched the Transparent Civil Society initiative, which almost 1,400 civil society organizations have joined to date.

In 2010, she took over as deputy managing director of the International Civil Society Centre – an association of the 30 largest international NGOs. There, she worked with management consultancies to improve the NGO’s operational effectiveness and with the UN to increase the NGO impact on the SDG’s. As of 2013, Karenina was executive director of Accountable Now. There she developed, among other things, the Global Standard for CSO Accountability – the first global standard for accountable and effective action by civil society organizations – with partners from 5 continents.

In 2017, she joined the executive team of the German Children and Youth Foundation with its 10 regional sites. She obtained Procura for the foundation, led strategic organizational development, and implemented data-driven portfolio and impact management.

The professional foundation was laid through the study of art history and philosophy as well as later a Master of Business Administration. Karenina is a strategic thinker with a wealth of experience, creativity and passion. Her goal: to help deploy the full potential of great social engagement.