Professional Headshot of Karen Baum

Karen Baum

Managing Partner, Sustainability & ESG Services

CPA, CFE

Executive Summary

As an accomplished strategic advisor with over 35 years’ experience, Karen leads BDO USA’s Sustainability & ESG Services, co-leads BDO’s Global Sustainability Services development and has led various innovation and market leadership initiatives at BDO.  As a corporate finance professional, she knows the importance of balancing impact and investment working with investors, lenders, and public and private companies to inspire and design practical, value enhancing sustainability solutions for organizations beginning or advancing along their ESG journey.  She brings insight and innovation to her clients by translating trends and seeing opportunities to create enterprise value while navigating diverse stakeholder expectations.  Karen helps companies maximize ROI of sustainability and resiliency programs and investments by taking a pragmatic approach to incorporating ESG into their immediate and longer-term strategic agendas. 

Karen engages professionals across the BDO platform to design agile, transformational solutions to help business leaders achieve top line growth, operational excellence, and enterprise risk mitigation across the organization. She has deep industry experience serving clients in entertainment, media & broadcasting, consumer products, healthcare, software, and technology sectors.  In addition, Karen has served in a variety of C-level roles in PE-backed portfolio companies and family office holdings.

  • American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
  • Association for Corporate Growth
  • Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
  • California State Society of Certified Public Accountants
  • International Society of Sustainability Professionals
  • Texas Society of Certified Public Accountant


  • B.A., Economics, Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles