 Professor Karl Mackie, a barrister and psychologist, became the organisation's Chief Executive and Eileen Carroll QC (hon), a Trans-Atlantic partner with a law firm (who had been involved in the initiative to form CEDR) joined to become the Deputy Chief Executive in 1996.On 12 June 2010 it was announced in the Queen's Birthday Honours that Karl Mackie was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by the UK Government for ‘services to mediation', the first citing of this reason for the award.Initially CEDR's focus was, by necessity, UK-focused, where in the early 1990s mediation was not well established in business disputes.