Karen Christensen is an entrepreneur, environmentalist, and scholar who writes about the many ways women have gained and wielded power.
She is the owner and CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Press, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, associate in research at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University, and founder of the Train Campaign.
Karen is known for her work with Chinese companies and for publishing about China and sustainability. She was the senior academic editor of the Encyclopedia of Community (SAGE). As a young mother, she wrote a number of popular environmental books including Home Ecology and The Armchair Environmentalist. She was also senior editor of the International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports (Macmillan).
Her articles have appeared in many publications including the Daily Telegraph Magazine and her books on green living were serialized in the Daily Express, Family Circle (UK), and Woman’s Own. Karen’s cover story in the Guardian Review, “Dear Mrs. Eliot,” was a memoir of her work with Valerie Eliot, second wife of T. S. Eliot.
Read Karen’s past dispatches from the frontlines of international publishing (and from small-town New England) at the Berkshire Blog. Her current writing is at Karen’s Letter on Substack, where she is also going back to her early environmental activism with a newsletter called Home Ecology. As a publisher, she is expanding her list to include Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and much more on the environment, and launching a series of Very Very Short Introductions.