Karen Waters is Director of Community Education for Albemarle County Public Schools, where she administers Driver Education, Motorcycle Safety and Open Doors Adult Education and serves as School Name Review Project Manager. Additionally she has served as adjunct faculty at Piedmont Virginia Community College, where she taught EDU 200: Teaching as a Profession for over 10 years. Formerly the Executive Director of the Quality Community Council, a non-profit coalition committed to improving the quality of life in Charlottesville Neighborhoods launched by the City Manager’s office in 1999, Karen has made her home in Charlottesville since 1995. 

During this time, she worked for local non-profit agencies such as the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, Jaunt, and Planned Parenthood, and served as a scheduler on the staff of the late Senator Emily Couric. A former Honors Student and Philip Morris Teaching Fellow at Piedmont Virginia Community College, she received her master’s in teaching and bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Virginia where she was named Master of Teaching Student of the Year by the Curry School of Education in 2001. Karen was awarded the Rawlings Prize by the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society in 2001 for “An Ordinance to Secure for White and Colored People a Separate Location of Residence for Each Race: A History of de jure Residential Segregation in Charlottesville and Richmond, Virginia” published in the Magazine of Albemarle County History in 2014. 

Karen has served on a number of local boards, committees and Task Forces including the Charlottesville Police Foundation Board, Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors, Albemarle Housing Improvement Program Board of Directors, Piedmont Housing Alliance Board of Directors, Public Housing Association of Residents Advisory Council, Albemarle County Housing Committee, Mayor’s Housing Policy Task Force, Election Study Task Force, City Market Task Force, Piedmont Virginia Community College Foundation Board, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center Breast Health Advisory Board, Masters in Public Health Community Advisory Board, and has chaired the Urban Ecosystems subcommittee of the City of Charlottesville’s Committee on Environmental Sustainability as well as the City of Charlottesville’s Housing Advisory Committee. Karen was named one of the Distinguished Dozen by the Charlottesville Daily Progress in 2004 and was appointed to Governor’s Task Force on Crime in the Minority Community by Mark Warner in 2005, and in 2017 was honored as Citizen of the Year by the Charlottesville Rotary Club. Most recently she has facilitated the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center’s Community Advisory Board on Billing and Collections in 2020.

Karen was most recently named to the President's Council at the University of Virginia, and currently serves as a Deacon and Treasurer at New Beginnings Christian Community. Additionally, she is Chair of the Board of Network2Work USA, Co-Chair of the Board of Cultivate Charlottesville, and sits on the National and Local steering committees for the Equity Center at the University of Virginia, of which she is one of the founders. She enjoys spending time with her daughter, Kelsey, and twin grandchildren, Oliver and Cecilia.