Karen Angel (California)

 

JAHP President

Karen Angel lives in Eureka, Humboldt County, California, home of the world’s tallest trees. She is the founding Executive Director (1979-1995) of Vector Rehabilitation which provides medical rehabilitation services to all regardless of their ability to pay. She lived in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea for two years (1995-1997) where she was active in cultural life as acting president of the Papua New Guinea Orchid Society and participating with the Port Moresby Road Runners. She collected running shoes in the USA for shoeless Papua New Guinean runners. At age fifty she won the Papua New Guinea National Half Marathon Women’s Division and finished in first place overall in the Women’s Race Circuit. She returned home to Humboldt County where she became the third woman runner to be inducted into the Six Rivers Running Hall of Fame based on her marathon and ultra marathon race performances.

She served as the Executive Director for the Humboldt Botanical Gardens Foundation (1998-2007) and is currently a consultant for nonprofit organizations. Her interest in the history of horticulture and Sir Joseph Banks led her to enlist as a voyage crew member on Captain James Cook’s historic replica tall ship HMS Endeavour in Canadian and New Zealand waters.

Karen has travelled extensively internationally with the Gran Sabana of southeastern Venezuela one of her favorite destination. Karen serves on a number of boards of directors including the Humboldt Arts Council/Morris Graves Museum of Art. She is a founding board member of Angel Conservation which is dedicated to creating, developing, documenting, supporting and working with programs and projects that conserve and preserve the cultures of indigenous peoples, native flora and fauna species, and the natural environments that gave them life.

Karen curates the JAHP Archive and has authored three research papers about Jimmie Angel and his era of exploration in addition to publishing in various magazines and books. She has also assisted with numerous films, books, newspaper and magazine articles. She is currently writing a paper, in cooperation with Pixar Studios, which compares and contrasts the geology, flora, fauna, and characters in Pixar's 2009 Academy Award winning movie UP with the geology, flora, fauna, and character's in the Jimmie Angel/Angel Falls adventure story. Her long-term project is a Jimmie Angel photobiography.