Karen Starz came to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) after what felt like a lifetime of searching for purpose and understanding the soul. Her mother and father are of different races, and she grew up without a strong sense of connection to community or tribe. Her journey took her through the classics of Western culture, Eastern culture, spirituality, and world religions.

Yet, there was dissatisfaction with the present-day world. It was in a deep, clinical depression that Karen met NVC through a person who asked her what she “did.” Her response was she “was learning how to be, not to survive — that, I have already done — but how to be.” This friend invited her to an NVC practice group, and for months she sat with arms crossed in skepticism asking, “Is empathy enough?”

Then, through the patience of her practice-group colleagues and mentor, she experienced epiphany after epiphany, and suddenly knew that NVC was the way to live in this world, with other human beings.

It was in 2014 when Karen dedicated the rest of her life to bringing peace to people through the work of nonviolence, and specifically Nonviolent Communication. Her depression lifted through daily, committed practice and finally the path of certification.

Today, Karen is a leader who models both success and failure with courage and integrity. Her passion is in the exploration, discovery, and integration of processes which help humans live as they were meant to — in peace. She loves working with communities to find the points of disconnection and bring them into connection through communication, spirituality, and continual learning opportunities. Karen coaches individuals and couples on a committed basis with her packages. She also teaches classes, does speaking engagements, works with groups, companies, and nonprofits building more effective systems, and performs facilitated conversations (mediations).

Her favorite qualities of being are humor, freedom, flexibility, and congruence. In her podcast, “Courageous Conversations,” Karen and her co-host, CiCi, often say, “people are out here peopling,” and that reminds her to expect everything and find humor in the surprises.

Karen is not afraid of conflict, and often leans into the emotion of anger, focusing workshops on how to “be angry and do empathy.”

Having never met Marshall Rosenberg, she still feels a strong kinship in his style of provoking people through stimulating thoughts and words. One of her favorite quotes of his is, “I can’t be honest if I think my well-being is dependent on another person’s reactions.”

She was president of Houston NVC for six years, and currently serves as the president of Network for NVC out of New Mexico.