Karen grew up in Jamaica and the US, where she undertook her education. After completing her undergraduate degree in social science at UC Berkeley, she worked in public health. Wanting to further her education, she went on to do Masters and PhD degrees in Sociology with Harvard University.

During her one-year PhD Fulbright Fellowship in the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Karen studied racism. It was the mid 1990s, post-apartheid, and the challenges of dismantling a racist system were apparent. She was drawn to doing research in this area.

Not long after she returned from South Africa, her Australian partner (who had just finished his PhD) received a job offer in Melbourne. She moved to Australia in 1997 for what, she thought then, would be a short time. After finishing her PhD she was offered a VicHealth funded postdoctoral fellowship in tobacco control policy research as part of a collaboration with the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Cancer Council. Although not in her preferred area of research, this gave Karen the opportunity to be named on the grant as the key post doc, and to work part-time while raising young children.

For the next 15 years Karen was at Swinburne University. She commenced as a Lecturer B, and was then asked to Chair her small department of 10 people as Head of Social and Policy Studies.

After a departmental restructure she was invited to take a leadership role in the new structure, and became Head of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Taking on this role was a big decision. The faculty was going through a formal change process, and she needed to keep people enthusiastic and influence the structure and strategy. Ultimately, she was pleased with the outcome, which had a positive impact in her area.

She took an opportunity to act in the role of Associate Dean Research within the Faculty, following which she applied for the position and won it. Karen is proud of her achievements as Associate Dean of Research. She developed effective processes to support research, which resulted in improved performance of the Faculty.

Karen moved to The University Melbourne at the start of 2018 to lead the School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts. In 2021 she became an Academic Board Officer. She finished her term as President of the Academic Board at the end of 2024.

Karen has lots of previous experience in mentoring, and enjoys seeing people develop and helping them shine. She is acutely aware of the importance of institutional politics and has experience in paying attention to and navigating political environments. As a mentor, her approach is to listen, ask questions, and help her mentee determine what they want to achieve.