Karen is an award-winning producer with a passion for wildlife, a degree in zoology and more than 15 years experience of making natural history films. She has produced programmes for the BBC, ITV, Discovery, Animal Planet, National Geographic and PBS in the USA. She realised a lifetime ambition when she met the scientist Prof E O Wilson during the making of the Ultimate Guide: Ants, and in Animals: The Inside Story for the BBC, she worked with scientists and graphics experts to create the first ever images of an elephant embryo developing in the womb and an emperor penguin chick growing inside the egg.
Killer Bees: Taming the Swarm for the BBC’s Natural World strand took her to Mexico and the USA where she met some charming bee scientists and some very angry bees whilst Ireland: Sculpted Isle exposed her to the vagaries of the Irish weather and ultimately to the Emmys in New York. Her most recent project has taken her to Zimbabwe and Zambia to walk with lions for ITV’s Lion Country.
Karen is also passionate about radio and presented and produced In Search of Jenny for BBC Radio 4. This 30 minute documentary in the Nature strand uncovered the story of Jenny, the world’s first captive gorilla. In December 2010 she was involved in a programme about the conservation status of lions in Africa for the BBC Radio 4 series Saving Species. Most recently she went to Assisi in Italy to report on a conference designed to bring the world faiths and the conservation movement closer together, again for Saving Species.
In 2008 and 2010 Karen was the Content Co-ordinator for the WildScreen Film Festival, the world’s biggest and most prestigious wildlife and environmental film festival held in Bristol every two years. The festival attracts delegates from the wildlife filming industry from all over the world including commissioners, producers, directors, camerapeople, underwater specialists, new media and new talent. In 2009 and 2010 she was also Content Producer for Communicate, a conference for senior environmental communicators from business, the media, conservation organisations and government, which is held in Bristol every year.
Most recently Karen co-ordinated the 3D soundscape and produced the black rat visuals for the audio-visual installation in the newly refurbished galley kitchen aboard Brunel’s S S Great Britain in Bristol.
