Prior to joining Arent Fox, Karen served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before her clerkship at the Ninth Circuit, Karen worked at a law firm in Portland, Oregon, where she handled commercial litigation, including energy and environmental matters.
Upon completing her law degree, Karen served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Michael W. Mosman of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. While in law school, she served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Ann Aiken of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.
Karen is the first student at the University of Oregon to pursue concurrent law and Ph.D. degrees. Before and during law school, Karen was an instructor and teaching fellow at the University of Oregon Department of Political Science, where she received her doctorate and Master’s Degree in that program. Her dissertation, “Opacity in an Era of Transparency: The Politics of De Facto Nuclear Weapons States” focused on the nuclear weapons programs in Israel, India, and Pakistan. For her Master’s Degree at the University of Chicago, Karen studied the competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.
