Karen has over 15 years of experience as a registered nurse. She has served elementary school through high school students as a school nurse in Wales, Wisconsin and in Skopje, Macedonia. She has also volunteered for a community health improvement project in Waukesha County, Wisconsin addressing nutrition and activity, and with the home health and midwife association in Macedonia on a prenatal teaching project. Currently Karen is working on a master's degree in Global Health Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with an interest in adolescent health in low resource settings, and health inequities related to climate-change. She received her bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 2019 she traveled to rural Ghana as a partner on a menstrual hygiene project as part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange. This experience has increased her capacity to advocate for adolescent health in a broad range of contexts.