Meet Karen Baker, Democrat for VA 9th District US Congress

Southwest Virginia deserves strong voices and real representation in the US House of Representatives. In November 2024, 9th District voters have the opportunity to elect Karen Baker!

The breadth and depth of her professional and personal experiences have prepared her to meet the needs of her district. As a hardworking, determined, proven public servant, Karen is exactly right for our region and our nation.

Karen Baker was born in Chicago and grew up in Michigan. She graduated from William Smith College, with a degree in comparative religion, and moved to Washington, D.C., where she was a staffer at Americans for Democratic Action. She then went to law school at Catholic University. She began work at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a trial lawyer, trying large-scale sex, race, and age discrimination cases, and eventually rose to become the Assistant General Counsel for Systemic Litigation.

All during this time, Karen was the single parent of a son; as he neared his teens, she decided that she needed a job that did not involve constant traveling. She became a federal administrative law judge for the Social Security Administration, a job she did for 17 years.

In 2006, however, she began to evaluate her future and decided that she wanted a change. She prepared for a nursing career, taking the science and math prerequisites at night while working as a judge during the day, and entered clinical training in 2009, after retiring from the federal government. She began working in a small rural hospital in 2011, and eventually became an ICU nurse.

During this time, she was also caring for her husband at home. He had developed a neurodegenerative disease, and ultimately died in 2014.

Karen eventually moved to Floyd County, Virginia in 2015, to a mountaintop farm with her horses and goats, and settled into community activities, serving on the Board of the Center for the Arts, doing pro bono legal work for other non-profits, and sewing masks during COVID and bags for asylum seekers to stuff with clothing and food as they passed through Roanoke’s bus station. In 2023, needing a hip replacement, she moved to town, ending over 30 years of farm life in Virginia and South Carolina.

Karen’s culture background is Quakerism; her father told her at age 4 that she was put on this earth to serve the greater good. She has always fought for justice and fairness.