Karen Kemp is the founding Director of the International Masters Program in GIS at the University of Redlands in southern California, having held that position and Professor of Geographic Information Science until December 2005. Professor Kemp holds geography degrees from the University of Calgary, Alberta (BSc 1976), the University of Victoria, British Columbia (MA 1982) and the University of California Santa Barbara (PhD 1992). Before moving to the US in 1988, she taught Geography, Geology and Microcomputer Applications in the university transfer program at Malaspina College, in Nanaimo, British Columbia (now Malaspina University College). In 1988 she joined the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in Santa Barbara working as Coordinator of Education Programs and co-editor, with Dr. Michael Goodchild, of the internationally recognized NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS. After completing her PhD at UCSB in 1992, she worked at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, and with Longman GeoInformation in Cambridge, England on various international GIS education projects. She returned to the NCGIA in 1994 to work as Assistant Director and later Associate Director. In January 1999 she moved to the University of California Berkeley to become Executive Director of the Geographic Information Science Center where she helped build the foundation for an innovative campus-wide GIScience initiative. In September 2000, she was invited to join the faculty at the University of Redlands to create and direct their new MS GIS program. In December 2005 she stepped down as Director of the Program and is currently on permanent sabbatical on the Big Island of Hawaii, while continuing to work with the University on their new university-wide GIS initiative and assisting in the GIS needs for the trail stewardship program for the Ala Kahaki National Historic Trail in Hawaii, among other tasks.