Download Karen’s Résumé
A 2017 Fulbright Scholar who traveled to Vienna, Austria to make a film that comments on the European refugee crisis, Karen is a master cinematographer who focuses on creating intimate, thought-provoking portraits of subjects that range from poets and poetry to wildlife, politics, and personal diary. She is one of the cinematographers on Deciding Vote from Wheelhouse Creative which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and is shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards.
Her 2010 film Notes on Liberty, which she produced, was included in the prestigious American Documentary Showcase that year. She was a delegate with the American Documentary Showcase in Poland in 2010. She’s taught filmmaking to undergraduates at several colleges as a visiting or adjunct professor, and she has curated local film festivals, including the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, a groundbreaking showcase of films about land, sustainability, and natural ecosystems.
From 2013-2018, she served as one of the primary filmmakers for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the world’s leading research center focused on birds and conservation. In that capacity, she made dozens of short documentaries about birds and the scientific work being done to understand and protect them and their habitats.
Her body of work is wide-ranging—from short, comic films to feature-length science documentaries to poetry films. The connecting thread is Karen’s meticulous attention to detail, her interest in visual storytelling, and her intuitive ability to support collaborations through the application of her significant knowledge of technique and film history.
Karen holds an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa Graduate College and a BS in Broadcasting and Film from Boston University.