Karen has been studying monarchs since 1984. She is the Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum and an adjunct Professor of Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at University of Minnesota. She is the former director of the Monarch Lab which runs the Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project and also Monarchs in the Classroom. She is also a founding member of MonarchNet and on the steering committee of The Butterfly Network.