Karen Karp

Karen Karp is an enlightened entrepreneur and respected consultant with over 25 years of specialty food retail, agriculture, and restaurant experience. Since 1990, when she founded Karp Resources, she has excelled at creating solutions for food system issues by building unique cross sector partnerships.

Raised near the farms of Long Island, after studying art in college, Karen found herself pulled back to agriculture and into the food industry. She began her career in food as general manager for a highly innovative restaurant group in New York City. In her move from art to agriculture, Karen has emerged as an influential voice for New York City’s good food movement.

Winner of the 2008 Enterprising Woman Award, Karen is a member of Women President’s Organization, sits on the board of Food Alliance, and has partnered with the James Beard Foundation in an initiative to create a sustainable model for the restaurant industry. She co-wrote the curriculum in Culinary Entrepreneurship for Mississippi University for Women (MUW), now a minor degree at the university, as well as the book, Gourmet to Go: A Guide to Owning and Operating a Specialty Food Store.

Karen holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Parsons School of Design and a master’s degree from the University of Bath School of Management’s Responsibility and Business Practice program, winning honors for her thesis, “How Does Food Sustain Us?”

Karen farms oysters near her home in Southold, New York.