Karen E. Young is a senior fellow and founding director of the Program on Economics and Energy at the Middle East Institute. She regularly teaches at the US Department of State Foreign Service Institute. Before joining AEI, she served as senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a research and visiting fellow at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE. She was twice awarded a Fulbright fellowship, first to Ecuador and later to Bulgaria.
She is frequently quoted in the media and has been interviewed by the BBC, CBS News, NPR, Al Jazeera, CBC, France 24 and CNBC Arabia, among other networks.