As Chief Executive Officer of Pioneer Human Services, Karen Lee leads one of the nation’s largest nonprofit social-enterprise business organizations. Under Karen’s leadership, Pioneer successfully operates several for-profit businesses that generate revenue to meet customer needs and bottom line expectations that help fund its social mission – to assist individuals with criminal histories lead healthy and productive lives.
As an organization with revenues in excess of $100 million, Pioneer has over 1,000 employees in over 50 locations throughout the state of Washington. Pioneer serves approximately 9,000 people annually through its jail diversion, behavioral health treatment, housing and job training programs. Pioneer’s recidivism reduction program, called Roadmap to Success, steers 96% of its participants towards crime free lives measured one year after program graduation.
Pioneer’s largest business enterprise, “Pioneer Industries”, is an aerospace manufacturing company in greater Seattle. A full-service, precision sheet metal fabrication and machining shop with significant competencies in 3 and 4-axis machining, Pioneer Industries makes over 3,000,000 parts annually and is known throughout the aerospace industry for superb quality, ontime delivery and customer service. As an employer, over 65 percent of Pioneer’s enterprise workforce has a conviction history and/or is in recovery from a substance use disorder. The organization is very proud to be a provider of second chances.
Karen has an impressive career both in business and the public sector. She served for five years as the Commissioner of the Washington State Employment Security Department. She had several leadership roles at Puget Sound Energy, and was also an associate attorney at K & L Gates in Seattle.
Karen is a native Washingtonian and is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law. She is Washington’s first female African American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. There she earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in Russian Studies and a minor in engineering. She spent four years in the U.S. Army as a junior officer stationed in Germany and Maryland where she gained experience in metalworking, machining, and logistics.
Active in the community, Karen is a trustee at Western Washington University and a member of the Regence Blue Shield (Health Care) and U.S. Bank Washington Advisory Boards. She is also an appointed member of Washington’s Statewide Reentry Council and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council. Karen has been named one of “Seattle’s Women of Influence” by the Puget Sound Business Journal, and more recently, received an “Executive Excellence” award from Seattle Business Magazine.