Karen is an accomplished leader whose experience spans traditional healthcare boundaries having worked with employers, plans, physicians, and health systems over her 30+ year career. Understanding each of these unique perspectives fuels her work as a translator, bridge-builder and change agent. Her long-standing personal mission is to make healthcare work better for more people at a cost they can afford. Ensuring that primary care is adequately funded, appropriately evaluated, and connected to the broader healthcare system in a patient-centered manner has been the central focus of these efforts for many years.

She possesses a broad understanding of the complex healthcare ecosystem with specific expertise in value-based strategies, advanced provider payment models, primary care transformation, health data exchange/interoperability, healthcare systems, and health policy. She brings deep experience with provider payment models having worked with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC) on its primary care and value-based payment strategies, including shared-risk ACO contracting.

In her role at the American Academy of Family Physicians, Karen’s leadership of system-level initiatives includes a broad range of practice advancement functions focused on moving primary care payment toward appropriately funded, prospective models and equipping family physicians to achieve professional fulfillment and enjoy successful careers in a variety of practice settings and roles. Actively engaging the private sector in these intiaitives complements the governmental advocacy work undertaken by the AAFP in DC and across all 50 states by its state chapters.