Karen is an internationally best-selling Canadian co-author and visual artist, with side hustles as a heart surgery survivor, caregiver for her elderly mother with dementia, hospice volunteer and defender of all that is lively.

Expanding from award-winning marketing work in IT and her caregiving, she takes her problem-solving and self-care skills and offers readings and workshops to inspire the IT community, Dementia Society, seniors home staff and residents' families, and teams and leaders in recognizing the hidden loneliness of caregiving, while gaining compassion for themselves and others.

Creative solutions to planning problems: Karen recently completed 19 years as an award-winning government marketing manager in information technology (IT). For crucial work managing top-level marketing events and training of senior leaders during the creation of a new federal department, she received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. As a manager, she got things done and kept my team engaged and inspired. Karen structured the team so that each member became the lead in their area of expertise. Each person became a backup to one of their lead colleagues. They were proud to have backup plans for every eventuality, once using Plan G, when we had started with Plan A: a new government had been installed and we were, in effect, flying the airplane as it was being built. This will-do attitude guaranteed effective management of events and sustainable prioritizing of communications for our Account Executive and senior leaders.

Self-care for the caregiver: Karen is the oldest of a large family. Her family loves our elderly mother who has dementia. As her "umbrella caregiver" I make sure our mother feels valued, and lives a life of quality within her new circumstances. I interface with the seniors home executive and staff. She regularly communicates with her siblings and extended family, providing updates and interaction on her needs and well-being, on visiting rules during the pandemic, on changes to the seniors home management and staff, on news on the health of family members, and on how she feels about her latest haircut. She manages appointments and visits, and financial concerns and taxes. She shares responsibility with other family members.

In the internationally best-selling anthology, Voices of the 21st Century: Conscious Caring Women Who Make A Difference (2022), Karen's chapter "Memory and Acceptance: Lessons From My Mother" shows caring for a loved one with dementia, and self-care for the caregiver - lessons taught by my mother on how to deal with grief and loss as she coped with the loss of her mother at 19. She applies the compassion advocated by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her books on death and dying, to work with the facets of grieving and caring. Her mother lost her mother at 19 and found solace in the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer. She taught Karen to fight for what was important, to find peace in accepting what cannot be changed, and the perseverance to solve insurmountable problems.

Karen was faced at 33 years old with the immediate knowledge she could die at any moment from a heart birth defect. As a survival mechanism, she learned self-care throughout the 27 years she waited for symptoms to worsen. Karen learned to thrive during uncertainty, with meditation, yoga, and gratitude for what she had and who she was with. She made every moment count, and gave herself a break during some of those moments. She wrote about her heart journey in the internationally best-selling anthology, Voices of the 21st Century: Resilient Women Who Rise and Make a Difference (2021), in the chapter "The Answer is To Be!"

How does Karen apply these lessons in management, marketing and self-care? She is kind to myself, and keeps my body, mind and soul nourished. She takes care of the caregiver. In her work as a Hospice volunteer, a caregiver to my elderly mother, a representative of our family with her seniors home, and as her business advisor...she can feel overwhelmed. Karen takes stock, assess what is needed, ask for assistance, follow up that the tasks are done, communicate regularly with other volunteers or her family, and remembers to breathe, and smile at that new red blossom on her hibiscus in the window.

Karen's workshops and keynotes consist of a reading and lively Question and Answer periods. She learns as much as the participants do, as she listens and responds to their questions and experiences.

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