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Karen is a shareholder in the Sacramento office of Ogletree Deakins, where she serves as the Chair of the West Coast OSHA Practice. She also holds the position of Co-Chair for both the firm’s Workplace Safety and Health Practice Group and the Workplace Violence Prevention Practice Group.
Originally hailing from Georgia, Karen graduated with honors from the United States Merchant Marine Academy. She subsequently spent a decade with Chevron Shipping Company, where she advanced to the rank of Chief Officer on oil tankers, holding an Unlimited Master’s License and San Francisco Bay pilotage endorsements. Additionally, she served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve from 1987 to 2000. Her extensive maritime, heavy industry, and petroleum background provides her with a unique perspective among employment lawyers, enabling her to offer practical, real-world solutions to management for achieving workplace safety objectives and litigation goals.
For the past eighteen years, Karen has specialized in defending employers in the workplace safety arena, responding to catastrophic incidents, and handling sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuits for California employers across various industries, including construction, manufacturing, transportation, wineries, and media. Her recent notable successes include a trial and appeal victory for a large national employer cited by Cal/OSHA for serious accident-related citations, effective catastrophe management at a remote California worksite involving an electrical induction accident, and a significant win in Sacramento Superior Court with a writ involving the independent employee act defense.
Karen also provides critical workplace violence prevention advice and on-site response, leveraging her extensive experience in OSHA compliance, investigations, litigation, and crisis assessment and response. Karen’s expertise and leadership have been recognized through her appointment to the Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 13, 2021. She was reappointed to this position in 2025 for an additional four-year term. In January 2023 and again in March 2025, Karen was elected President of the Board of Pilot Commissioners for consecutive two-year leadership terms.
Beyond her professional achievements, Karen is a dedicated community leader in Northern California, holding leadership positions in various school boards and community organizations, including schools, libraries, and professional associations. She is the founding counsel for the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, which successfully advocated for prize equality in women’s surfing by collaborating closely with leading big-wave women athletes, the California Coastal Commission, and the State Lands Commission from 2016 through 2019.
