Karen is a lifelong environmentalist, naturalist, educator, poet, author and overpopulation activist. She began her career as a naturalist in 1983 and as the director of the City of Richfield’s Wood Lake Nature Center in 1991. She is passionate about the role nature centers can make in keeping communities thriving. She is a former public and private school teacher and received two of her three degrees from the University of Minnesota, all in education in the years: 1975 and 1985. Karen received her doctorate from the University of St. Thomas in 2002 where she studied critical pedagogy and its implications for the future of nature centers.