Karen Palacio serves an Associate Vice President, Programs where she oversees a portfolio of investments focused on NTD control and elimination activities. This includes overseeing the END Fund’s Deworming Innovation Fund, a six year initiative which aims to accelerate progress towards eliminating intestinal worms and schistosomiasis by investing in innovative approaches to treatment, prevention, and sustainability in four high burden African countries.
Karen has 15 years of experience in the development sector with a focus on program design and management, advocacy, and partnership building. Prior to joining the END Fund in 2014, she served as a Senior Program Officer for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases at the Sabin Vaccine
Institute. In this role, Karen managed grant awards to multilateral institutions and non-profit organizations, and led advocacy, resource mobilization, and partnership activities aimed at strengthening national NTD programs in over 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and African regions. Prior to her role with Sabin, Karen worked at Partners of the Americas and at Arch
Street Communications.
Karen holds a Masters of Public Health from The George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with a focus on Latin American Studies from the State University of New York at Oswego. She is a native Spanish speaker and outside of work, she enjoys reading, running and spending time with her husband and twin son and daughter.