Program Coordinator
Karen has been the Program Manager for the Regional Internship program for the last 13 years. She places up to 80 junior and senior high school students a year into paid internships in the healthcare industry, coordinating the placements as well as the online component and after school workshops. Karen enjoys building meaningful relationships with the students and strong partnerships with the area healthcare centers and participating educational institutions.
Reasons for Coming to Work
In addition to feeding her family, Karen really enjoys working with her colleagues in EDUCATION CONNECTION’s Center for 21st Century Skills, who she considers smart, fun, and who make work a learning experience for her. Karen also believes the experiences the students have in the workplace are life-changing for many of them. She feels that she has played a small role in helping them determine their future academic and career pathways. When a student says that the program has confirmed a lifelong dream to become a doctor or nurse or whatever it may be, Karen knows she’s helped to make that happen.
Other Programs
Karen is also the coordinator for the Real World Applications in Bioscience: Creating Career Pathways program, which works in conjunction with the Internship program to help makes high school students aware of career pathways through internships, speakers, and field trips.
For six years, Karen was also the Program Coordinator for the Career Options in STEM interdistrict grant program, which was designed to make middle school girls aware of the many career options they have if they continue to do well in math and science. This was an exciting program that brought women in STEM careers together with middle school girls as they highlighted their career and academic pathways through a lecture and activity session.
Other activities
Karen served as a board member and as Chairman of the Northwestern Area Health Education Center. She is a past award winner of EDUCATION CONNECTION’s Level 5 Distinction Award. Before coming to EDUCATION CONNECTION, Karen worked for many years in the manufacturing industry in accounting and marketing.
Personal
Karen graduated from Fairfield University. She is happily married for 20 years to her best friend, and they have four wonderful children. In the last year, two of her children have married, so she is now a mother-in-law and she will soon be a first-time grandmother! Karen also has one daughter in college and one daughter in her junior year of high school. She has two dogs and a cat, two grand-dogs, and a grand-cat! Karen loves reading and hiking. Her favorite place to vacation is Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
