Karen is an associate professor of strategic communications at the University of Louisville. She is actively involved in researching in public relations, reputation management, social media and crisis communications. Along with research, she also tries to inspire and brainstorm creative applications for this research not only to the scholarly community, but also for businesses and agencies in public relations. Karen has also coordinated and advised various companies on the areas of social media pedagogy and certification programs, such as Hootsuite, Meltwater, Adobe, and Hubspot.