Position Title
News and Media Relations Specialist
- News and Media Relations
Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Graduate and professional schools in Law, Education, Management
Karen is the department’s point person for providing public/media relations and strategy for the College of Letters and Science (divisions of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, and Social Sciences), the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, and graduate and professional schools in law, education and management. She also represents Human Ecology in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science and publishes the UC Davis Arts Blog.
She enjoys showing the rest of the world how UC Davis plays a role in analyzing, discovering and explaining world events.
Karen joined UC Davis in 2011 after a varied career as a private communications consultant, a media relations manager at the California Medical Association, and a reporter covering the court system in Los Angeles, among other jobs. UC Davis is not her first UC stint, as her first job after her 10-year career as a journalist was at UCLA, where she represented the School of Law and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
She lives in Sacramento with her husband, Steve, where they are raising her fourth Akita, Umbra. Karen and Steve sing in a choir. Karen is an accomplished quilter and free-motion stitcher, and she teaches quilting classes at the UC Davis Craft Center.
Guilty pleasure
Quilting.
Favorite film
His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.
Favorite book
Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy; all scintillating history