​At the helm of the Division tasked with fundraising, Karen Bruns, Senior Director of Development & Alumni Relations, is used to taking the heat – especially in today's economic climate. But this trained lawyer, former marketing director, and CEO of a multimedia publishing company, is more than qualified and willing to take up any challenge to bring about positive change.

You trained as a lawyer and have worked in various fields, from publishing to advertising and, more recently, higher education and research. To what do you attribute your success?

Curiosity, optimism, and integrity. These three attributes have at times stood me in greater stead than my three degrees.

They say that “Research is formalised curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." Well, curiosity is also fundamental in the world of fixing and fundraising. It's really paid off to have been in the eternal quest to find out why, how and when.

Optimism isn't an essential ingredient to the legal profession, itself being more cynical in nature, but it's part of me. But hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism, which is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

And finally, integrity can be the bluntest of these in that it makes certain compromises really difficult, if not impossible. But it means that I can always look myself in the eye in the mirror, and that's really important to me.

What motivates you?

I have a team of dedicated professionals – some of the finest in the country – who have really tried to embrace and bring about a lot of change over the past three to four years. I admire the knowledge, and skills amongst this group of likeable and diverse people, and know that every day no one person is as smart as all of us together. Keeping all of that common purpose on track is a daily challenge and a great motivator.

Who inspires you and why?

It is such a personal question—who inspires you—that it can't be forced. When asked, many women respond with their mothers or grandmothers. Of course, there's that. Others struggle with the question as I do. I attended an all-girls school, and have hit a few glass ceilings in my working life, so it stands to reason that I feel strongly about women's equality and female leadership. 

There are many women in history who I admire, from the legacy that a woman like Queen Elizabeth will leave, to that of South African trade unionists Emma Mashinini and Ray Alexander, to the real professional pioneers, the journalist Nellie Bly, the welfare activist Emily Hobhouse, and Mary Malahele-Xakana, the first black woman to register as a medical doctor in South Africa.

Do you have any words of advice for the women at SU?

No matter where you are in life, you'll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. Most people are less interested in you than you think, so why not work with that? So my advice would be to surround yourself with people who do things and not those who will always spend more time judging or talking about what other people do. Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.