Karen Somerville, PhD
President, Canadians for Properly Built Homes
Dr. Karen Somerville co-founded Canadians for Properly Built Homes (CPBH) with her husband, Alan Greenberg, in 2004. Victims of purchasing a seriously and fundamentally flawed new home in Ottawa (e.g., in excess of 50 confirmed Ontario Building Code violations), they quickly realized the need for much greater consumer protection relating to new home purchases. In speaking with other new home owners across Canada, and in the United States, they discovered that many other new home owners were facing similar problems.
This is why they founded CPBH.
Karen is an educator, executive coach, advisor, management consultant, board member, researcher, public speaker and accountant. She is the President of Performance Plus Group, which specializes in leadership development and organizational change. Karen is an Associate faculty member with Athabasca University’s Executive MBA Program.
With more than 30 years of experience as a leader and in senior management, Karen is a results-oriented professional with extensive experience in all three sectors (private, public and non-profit). As a management consultant, she has successfully worked with very diverse clients from The World Bank to high tech start-ups. Her research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Change Management, Public Admin Quarterly, and the International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management.
Karen has served on many boards over the past three decades including the Canada-Minnesota Business Council (Director and Treasurer), the Central Park Community Association (President), International Social Services Canada (Director), the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton (Vice-President and Director), and the Ottawa Chapter of the Strategic Planning Forum (President and Director).
Karen holds a PhD in Management (Carleton University), an MBA (University of Ottawa), a Certified Executive Coach (CEC) designation (Royal Roads University), a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation, a Certified General Accountant (CGA) designation and a Chartered Director (C.Dir.) designation (McMaster University).