Karen E. Sutton

Karen Sutton is a senior executive with 25+ years leading operations departments with $33M-$1.5B budgets and $45-$150M capital construction projects. She has designed and driven complex, multi-team, enterprise initiatives, rejuvenated HR, IT, marketing and sales systems to instill discipline and efficiency, and ensured no disruptions to client service—even while organizations were undergoing seismic shifts.

As CAO at Sotheby’s, Ms. Sutton led the completion of the construction renovation project at corporate headquarters at 1334 York Avenue. The project included rebuilding floors and consolidating the majority of public and client spaces within the building with no interruption of day-to-day business operations. Prior to this, Ms. Sutton was responsible for the operations division of Sotheby’s as Chief Operating Officer and held leadership roles in Operations, Worldwide Marketing and Global Client Development. In addition to division management responsibilities, Ms. Sutton has been involved in several major initiatives and projects. Beginning in 1998, she was responsible for the expansion of the New York offices and oversaw all elements of the $150 million, 400,000 square foot renovation and new construction from the planning, phased construction, financial reporting and community relations. In 2011, she was instrumental in managing contract negotiations with Sotheby’s Union art handlers. In 2013/2014, Karen led the 1334 York Building valuation, financial modeling, re-stack and program design to present to the Board. She successfully defended the valuation of the building and the consulting team and additionally worked with the Americas Executive team to identify and deliver savings in operational areas, which was implemented by the facilities, operations and catalogue production teams. In March 2015, Ms. Sutton assumed the role of Interim Managing Director, Americas and was promoted to Chief Administrative Officer in March 2016 with responsibility for critical strategic projects such as the global real estate strategy.