Karen Bassarab is a senior program officer with the Food Communities and Public Health program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF). Her work focuses on understanding interactions between the built environment, food access, policy and collaboration in shaping place-based food systems. Karen spends most of her time at CLF on the Food Policy Networks project working to build the capacity of food policy councils and similar organizations to effectively engage in food systems policy change. Karen has a Master’s degree in community and regional planning and public policy and has worked for over a decade on food systems programs and policy.