Karen Henken

Karen Henken started out the early part of her career in international education in Japan with the Fulbright Commission. From there she moved to Silicon Valley using her fluency in Japanese to work in business. She received an MBA at Stanford and set up and ran international operations for technology businesses in the Asian Pacific and throughout other parts of international markets. Her entire family was involved in education, so was always interested in finding a way to intersect my business experience and social change. It was eight years ago that she decided that she was going to pursue that passion within her local context of San Diego. She was working for the San Diego Social Innovation Trust and from there began teaching business and social innovation courses. She was integrally involved in the design of the University of San Diego’s Masters for Peacebuilding of Social Innovation and was the director of that program for many years. Karen is also on several non-profit boards, has worked with incarcerated individuals, and currently manages a start-up fund in Rwanda for new entrepreneurs.