Karen Theil, J.D., Ph.D.

Karen Thiel most recently worked for the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, where she provided legal advice to senior leadership and Medicaid programs as senior counsel for the Government Programs Practice Group. Prior to that, she served as senior counsel for Akin Gump’s Public Law & Policy Department, during which she worked pro bono for the Smashing Walnuts Foundation to secure multiple years of funding for the National Institutes of Health to create a database on children’s cancers. She was a partner in the Health Policy Practice at Patton Boggs LLP, where she worked with breast cancer prevention advocates to promote the importance of the Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS). She also consulted for the California State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Science and Technology, working with then-State Senator John Garamendi to secure funding for research in cancer prevention and detection through a Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. Additionally, she supported the National Institutes of Health’s Biospecimen-Related Research Program on ethical, legal and policy practices for biospecimen-related research, presented at conferences—including the National Cancer Institute’s Biospecimen Best Practices Forum—and co-authored an article on these issues that was published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. Ms. Thiel is a breast cancer survivor.