Karen Dunnell

From Freepedia

Image:Karen Dunnell.jpg Karen Hope Dunnell (born 16 June 1946) has been National Statistician, Registrar General and Director of the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom since 1 September, 2005.

Mrs Dunnell was educated at Bedford College, London.

She started her career as a health care researcher with the Institute of Community Studies and then St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. She joined the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS) in the mid 1970s, carrying out a wide range of national surveys and managing medical statistics. When OPCS merged with the Central Statistical Office to form the ONS, she became the Director of Demography and Health Statistics. She later moved to a central post to help launch National Statistics and plan the arrival of Len Cook, the first National Statistician, in 2000.

She then became a Group Director in Social Statistics in 2000 and took up a post on the ONS Executive in 2002. She was responsible for setting up the new "Sources" Directorate, bringing together household and business surveys, the infrastructure that supports them and planning for the 2011 census. She has also launched the ONS Statistical Modernisation Programme.