An intrepid solo traveler since age fourteen, always in love with books and global vistas, Karen has edited well-known reference works such as the Encyclopedia of Community and is the author of a number of popular environmental books, including The Armchair Environmentalist, which have been translated into French, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai. She is CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, which she cofounded in 1998.Karen grew up in Minnesota and in the Silicon Valley in California. After graduating with a degree in literature from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, she went to London and worked as a nanny and chauffeur before starting her publishing career at Blackwell Scientific Publications and Faber & Faber, where she was editorial assistant to Valerie (Mrs. T. S.) Eliot on the first (and so far only) volume of the T. S. Eliot letters (1988). Her memoir of work on the T. S. Eliot letters, "Dear Mrs. Eliot," was the cover story in the U.K. newspaper the Guardian's Review magazine, 29 January 2005.