Environmental Leadership Program

Karen Purcell is Project Leader for Celebrate Urban Birds, a  citizen science project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that has engaged over 130,000 participants and nearly 5000 partner organizations. She also heads Project PigeonWatch, and Urban Bird Gardens, an NSF funded planning grant designed to develop a new model for bringing participatory STEM education to placed-at-risk Latino families. Karen was raised in Chile, South America and came to the U.S. to attend Cornell University. Soon after graduating she spent five years in New York studying and performing under scholarship from Merce Cunningham. She has worked with adults and youth as an English as a Second Language teacher,  a public school teacher, and as a foster care educator with at-risk teens.  At the Lab she has concentrated much of her efforts in developing programs and partnerships to engage and support Latino audiences in the sciences and the arts. She is also a member of the Pranadhanas, a Yoga-Dance performing arts group in Ithaca NY.