Karen Downs

As chief communications and marketing operations officer for the American Cancer Society, Karen leads the Communications department as well as a team in the Marketing department focused on business enablement and centralized support that helps to define and implement the American Cancer Society’s strategic priorities. Karen stepped into the communications-focused portion of her role on an interim basis in June.

 As head of the Communications team and a member of the Executive Team, Karen is a senior strategic adviser to our organization’s executive and volunteer leadership teams on reputation, communications issues, and risk-related matters. As head of enterprise business operations in Marketing, Karen oversees the Enterprise Customer Support, Marketing Operations, and Email Marketing teams.

 Karen is an experienced team manager with more than 15 years spent in nonprofit marketing, data management, and operations. Karen has held previous interim roles as chief marketing officer and is a multi-faceted, talented, well-respected leader within ACS.

 Before joining the American Cancer Society in 2015, Karen led direct mail, digital marketing, fundraising, monthly giving, and multichannel campaign development initiatives at a nonprofit and for an agency supporting nonprofit clients.

 Karen has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Alabama and lives in Georgia, with her husband and two children.