“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver
Early on, Karen discovered her true passion in life is to cultivate connections with nature and restore resilience. She’s been doing just that over the past 25+ years. Karen regularly collaborates with others on and about large-scale habitat restoration, sustainability, and biomimicry projects to help protect and restore ecosystems, generate sustainable innovations, and foster connections to nature. She brings her deep love of natural history to workshops, translating nature’s strategies for non-biologists. In workshops aimed at connecting with and understanding natural systems, Karen cultivates curiosity, inquiry, and a deep respect for the natural world.
Karen has over 25 years of experience in habitat restoration, specializing in wetland and stream restoration. She regularly collaborates with engineers, fish biologists, and hydrologists to design and implement large stream restoration projects, focusing on the revegetation. Karen engages in all aspects of wetland restoration and mitigation, from project management, wetland delineations, mitigation planning, permitting, implementation, and monitoring. Karen also leads a myriad of biological surveys including sensitive plant and invasive species surveys. She regularly contributes to conservation planning and habitat protection projects throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
Karen is a seasoned biomimicry educator, facilitator and consultant who has practiced biomimicry in a variety of projects since 2000. Karen offers project management, biological research, facilitation and training in biomimicry as a tool for sustainable innovation to corporate, government and non-profit clients. She regularly teaches the core tools of biomimicry to biologists, designers, engineers, and business leaders throughout the world. Karen is a faculty member in the Masters of Science in Biomimicry and Graduate Certificate in Biomimicry programs at Arizona State University on-line. She taught Biomimicry 3.8’s 8-month Biomimicry Specialist Program in 2011 and 2012, the Biomimicry Professional Certification Program in 2013, and teaches numerous week-long immersion workshops throughout the world.
Education
B.A. Environmental Science, Biology emphasis, UC Berkeley
M.Sc. Earth Sciences, Montana State University
M.Sc. Biomimicry, Arizona State University
Certifications
Certified Biomimicry Professional
Wetlands Delineation Certification
Permaculture Design Certification
Professional Development Training
Project Management
Design of Natural Stream Channels
River Processes and Restoration
Riparian Plant Restoration
Streambank Soil Bioengineering