Ecological Education Program Director
[email protected]
541-753-3099 x 704

Karen Hall is the Program Director for Ecological Education at IAE. She manages all aspects of the program, including fundraising, staff supervision (staff development and mentoring), and oversight of program work, budgets and deliverables. In addition, she is responsible for writing and communication, organizational support and collaboration.  As a lifelong naturalist, she specializes in helping humans connect more deeply to the non-human aspects of nature.

Karen earned her B.S. in Biology at Western Carolina University in North Carolina. Her master’s thesis (Botany) focused on in vitro growth and chemical extraction/analysis of goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), an important medicinal plant. She completed this degree and her Ph.D. (Plant Physiology) at Clemson University in South Carolina where she studied ethnobotany with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Before coming to IAE, Karen taught college students, designed and led adult outreach programs in South Carolina, worked on urban ecological concerns in Texas and was an administrator with a raptor center in Oregon.

When she isn’t nature-scaping her postage-stamp sized yard, Karen is biking recumbently with her husband, providing lap space for Scrappy, surface designing via computer and dyeing early and often with plants/insects/lichens/mushrooms.