Karen Baxter

Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Pharmaceutical Press

Following her pharmacy degree and early career in hospital pharmacy, Karen’s interest in the impacts of adverse drug reactions on patients led her to take a postgraduate Clinical Pharmacy Masters at the University of Derby.

After a variety of clinical roles, and a period working on the postgraduate pharmacy programme at the University of Derby, Karen moved into publishing, working first on Stockley’s Drug Interactions before moving to manage the programme of major reference works published by Pharmaceutical Press (PhP), the publishing division of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Karen became BNF Director in 2014,and oversaw the transformation of the British National Formulary (BNF) Publications, recreating their data structures, content management systems and content creation processes.  This included leading the changes to the BNF that made it a digital-first publication and underpinned the creation of the award winning BNF app, that has been downloaded by over half a million health professionals.

Building on a deep understanding of publishing and having led and implemented a number of significant change programmes which have moved Pharmaceutical Press, the knowledge business of the RPS, into a more digitally focussed organisation , Karen became MD of Pharmaceutical Press in 2018.

Having led the knowledge business for three years, Karen extended in her role in 2022 to become the Deputy Chief Executive of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, where she utilises her experience of driving change and passion for patient safety.

Karen has extensive external experience both as a charity Trustee and as a non-executive director in other knowledge businesses, and has a keen interest in organisational design and development.