Karen Greiner is a researcher and practitioner specializing in inclusive approaches to communication for action and social change. She joined UNICEF's West and Central Africa Office as Regional Advisor for Social and Behavior Change in December 2020 after working in  the Democratic Republic of Congo with UNICEF's Ebola/COVID outbreak team. From 2018-2020 she led the Research/Data-use team within the Communication for Development team in the Polio Unit at UNICEF, HQ-NY. 

 

From 2016- 2018,  she served as Director of Research and Innovation at Equal Access, a non-profit organization working in media and community engagement for social change in Asia and West/Central Africa. She has also worked on several projects with Ideo.org, as a design researcher in Mexico, Congo/DRC, and Cote d'Ivoire. 

 

From 2013-2015, Karen led the communication for development (C4D) teams in Chad and Karachi Pakistan as part of UNICEF’s Polio Eradication efforts. While teaching in the Communication and Development Master's program at Ohio University (2012-2013) she contributed to the design and delivery of hybrid communication courses (online and face-to-face) for UNICEF and USAID. 

 

She is a Fulbright Fellow Alumna (Colombia, 2008-2009), with a Ph.D. in Health Communication from Ohio University.  She was an English teacher and HIV/AIDS educator as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon (1998-2000), has a BA from Duke University in Spanish and an MA in International Education from New York University. 

 

Karen's passion is the design of social change interventions that invite  community input and action, where community members are positioned as resources and active agents of change rather than "targets" or beneficiaries. She is fluent in French and Spanish and can bargain and make grammar mistakes in Pulaar and Wolof.