Karen Lightfoot worked for over 25 years on Capitol Hill, where she served as Communications Director and Senior Policy Advisor for two major House committees: the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  During her career, she was responsible for developing media communications on a broad range of health and environmental legislation including the Affordable Care Act, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Food Safety Modernization Act, comprehensive tobacco control legislation, and spectrum reform.  In addition, Karen was responsible for managing media coverage during high-profile investigations, including investigations into steroid use in major league baseball, misleading intelligence and contract abuses in Iraq, and the Wall Street collapse.

Karen Lightfoot earned a Bachelor of Arts in the Humanities at Yale University and a Master in Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Karen began her career in Washington working for Representative Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and she worked in the Office the Majority Whip. Subsequently, she worked on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the Task Force on the Development of Parliamentary Institutions in Eastern Europe. From 1992 to 1997, she served as a senior legislative associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities before returning to the Hill in 1997 to work for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and in 2009, moved to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In 2015, she served as the Communications Director and Senior Advisor for Senator Schatz before returning to the House in 2016 as Communications Director and Senior Policy Advisor to the House Select Investigative Panel, Committee on Energy and Commerce.