San Diego Coastkeeper
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San Diego Coastkeeper Staff
The SD Coastkeeper Staff
Karen Franz, Watershed Monitoring Program Director
karenjm@sdcoastkeeper.org
Karen Franz joined San Diego Coastkeeper in January 2006 and directs Coastkeeper’s Watershed Monitoring activities, as well as Low Impact Development / Hydromodification and Community Based Social Marketing work. She combines these program areas and approaches in order to promote watershed stewardship, responsible land-use decisions and positive environmental behavior change using regulatory-level scientific data collected through the program.
She is also the Campaign Manager of Coastkeeper’s Water Supply Campaign, and leads efforts to implement knowledge management solutions for the organization. Karen holds a Bachelors degree in Geology and an LL.M. (Masters equivalent) in Public International Law and has eight years of experience in linking scientific research to community and environmental health initiatives in the United States and internationally.
Karen, a native Californian, holds a Bachelors degree in Geology from Claremont McKenna College and a LL.M. in International Law from the University of Leiden (The Netherlands). Her Masters thesis examined the obligation upon states to cooperate for transboundary water resource management. From 2004-2006, Karen has worked as a freelance researcher on a variety of projects pertaining to watershed management, governance, development and protection. She moved to San Diego from Brazil, where she was working for a Non Governmental Organization to establish its water project, which worked at the community level to empower rural landowners to monitor their surface waters prior to Bauxite mining activities in the region and to establish a Payment for Environmental Services model basin.
Prior to working in Brazil, Karen was stationed in the southwest of France to research regional industrial pollution in connection with a report for the United Nations World Water Development Report. Additionally, she worked for the UK Department for International Development facilitating a research project that collected primary accounts of practitioners working in the field of international development on projects pertaining to water governance. Karen also worked for the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, The Netherlands and had the opportunity to work with UN and International organizations to establish an international transboundary waters mediation facility.
Following college, Karen was a gold and silver explorations geologist in British Columbia, Canada. She has also worked for the Los Angeles Music Academy.