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With expertise in strategy, growth, and turnaround work, Karen is a nationally recognized leader focused on ensuring corporate viability and development through driving operational excellence and transformation of care.

Karen is a board member of Advantia Health, serving as Chair, Compensation Committee and as a member of the Quality Committee. Advantia is a privately held, growth-oriented company committed to transforming women’s health services through technology and best practices. She serves on the Commercial and Operating Committee as a board member for Surgical Solutions, a portfolio company of Grupo Vitalmex, S.A., providing sterile processing solutions to enhance operating room efficiency, quality, and physician satisfaction.

Karen also is on the board of Ingenovis Health, a family of forward-thinking staffing healthcare companies. She served as Board member/Global Health Advisor for Blink Science, a biotechnology and digital startup providing instantaneous diagnosis of COVID-19.

As a Senior Advisor to investment banking firm Juniper Advisory, Karen provides counsel to firm clients contemplating nonprofit healthcare mergers or acquisitions. She also is a Senior Advisor to TVM Capital Healthcare Partners, an emerging markets-focused healthcare private equity investment firm focused in Southeast Asia and Middle East/North Africa. She joined Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) as a mentor. CDL delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies. CDL mentors include accomplished entrepreneurs, operators, and investors.

As the immediate past President/Chief Executive Officer of Sinai Chicago, the city’s largest private safety net healthcare system with over $1 billion in revenues, Karen oversaw a successful turnaround of financial, philanthropic, and operational performance. Results to date show a year-over-year improvement profitability, taking the organization from a loss of $42 million to a profit of $32.6 million, improved EBIDA from a negative $14.8 million to a positive $55.6 million and increased philanthropy from $2.3 million annually to $13.5 million. Karen previously served as the Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the integration into the System of a private hospital. During her time at Sinai Chicago, she formed strategic relationships with non-healthcare partners, creating assets in underdeveloped urban areas.

An early career entrepreneur, after purchasing a rehabilitation services firm, Karen grew the company into the largest of its kind in Chicago before selling it to a publicly traded firm. Following the sale, Karen held increasingly responsible positions in nonprofit and public companies. Karen is an influential participant in state and national legislative policy-making agendas, working with legislators of both the Senate and Congress.

Karen serves on civic, state, and national boards. She was the 2021 Chair of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association Board, having served as Chair of the Finance Committee and a member of the Executive, Governance and Health Equity Committees. Karen also served as a board member of America’s Essential Hospitals, as a member of the Governance Committee. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Kenya Methodist University in Nairobi.

Awards include “One of 10 Business Leaders to Watch in 2020” by the Chicago Tribune, twice named to Crain’s Chicago Business “Notable Women in Chicago Healthcare” list, the Weizmann Institute “Women of Science” award, a recipient of the National Medical Fellowship “Leadership in Healthcare” award, and the 2021 awardee of “Community Leadership” for the Chicago Health Executives Forum. She is a member of the Chicago Network, Women Corporate Directors, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Economic Club of Chicago, and Kellogg Executive Women’s Network.

Karen holds an MBA from Northwestern University, J.L. Kellogg School of Management. She is a frequently requested national speaker, world traveler, avid bicyclist, and cook. She resides in Chicago, Illinois.