Karen is an award-winning reporter, editor and storytelling coach.
She was a host of NPR's Planet Money and a reporter at This American Life and More Perfect, Radiolab's first spinoff show. Karen is also a live storytelling performer and coach with shows like The Moth and Pop-Up Magazine, and was featured in the book How To Tell A Story. She regularly teaches classes on topics like story structure, editing, interviewing and live storytelling, and was an adjunct professor at the Columbia, NYU and CUNY Graduate Schools of Journalism. Her stories have appeared on Radiolab, All Things Considered, On the Media, Reply All, The Rumpus and many others.
Before becoming a journalist, Karen spent several years as a speechwriter and executive comms advisor, working in more than 20 countries. She managed executive communications for the Chairman & CEO of Cisco, and later moved to India to work for Cisco's Chief Globalization Officer. After returning to the U.S., she worked in philanthropy, running communications for Cisco's corporate social responsibility (CSR) program and for the Skoll Foundation.
Karen’s journalism work has won several awards, including a national Murrow Award, an Ambie for podcast of the year, a Gold Signal Award and best international audio reporting from the Overseas Press Club.