With a back­ground in news­pa­per and mag­a­zine jour­nal­ism, Karen Dukess spent the last eight years as a speech­writer on gen­der equal­i­ty at the Unit­ed Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme. She is a grad­u­ate of Brown Uni­ver­si­ty and the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism and lives in Pel­ham, New York.