Karen Lee is a Southern California native who earned her bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of California Los Angeles and her master’s degree in nursing as a Coverdell Fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer working with marginalized communities in Panama (2009-2011) and the Philippines (2013, 2016), and has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

Her hiatus from conventional American life became a transformative experience which would inspire her to become a nurse. Those explorative years also spurred an interest in different cultures, Buddhist philosophy, and the facets of human nature.

Apart from a love of travel her hobbies include gardening, graphic and interior design, and collecting seashells, fossils, feathers, and other remnants from the natural world. Her tendencies include cleaning, organizing, making lists, and obsessing over big dogs, mid-century modern furniture, fine stationery, indigenous textiles, acoustic cover songs, and orchids. She maintains a private life splitting her time in Baltimore and Los Angeles with her husband Tom and a proboscis monkey named Jesse Jesselton. 𓃸