In 2010 Karen founded DesignPracticum with two colleagues who are design professors at FIT (New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology) and lead the only undergraduate branding and packaging design program in the country. Together they help small companies improve their business performance by teaching them how to use branding and design as a competitive advantage. Karen has over thirty years’ experience in the branding and packaging design field in New York City at three of the world’s leading design consultancies. She has personally led numerous branding and packaging redesign programs for brands that are household names here and around the world: Haagen-Dazs, Stouffer’s, Welch’s, Lysol, Maxwell House, Bayer, Tropicana, Hewlett Packard, Jack Nicklaus, Goya Foods. Karen holds a master’s degree in Communications Design from Pratt Institute. She has produced educational seminars for designers here in the U.S. and has lectured on the subject of branding to designers and marketers in Europe and Asia. Most recently she co-wrote a textbook on packaging design published in China. Karen began her career as a Clio-award-winning designer ultimately joining The Coleman Group (now FutureBrand) as a managing partner responsible for the overall quality of the firm’s creative product. Her efforts helped the company grow to a staff of 100 in three U.S. offices with membership in a network of select design firms around the world. For Dance Teacher Web, Karen makes her special expertise in strategic branding, design for marketing communications, and design management available to dance studio owners. www.designpracticum.com