Karen Knudsen did not grow up in a scientifically centered home. She grew up in a military family. But at an early age, as a “naturally curious” kid, she came to love the experience of discovery and gravitated toward math and science. That led Knudsen to assume she would one day become a medical doctor. But her career went in another scientific direction, starting with a stint as a summer research intern working in the lab at the National Cancer Institute during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
“There was so much interest in trying to understand retrovirus like HIV, and so I went to a lab that was actually using retrovirus as a way to study cancer,” she recalled in a recent interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series (Knudsen was named to the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list in 2024). “It got me very interested in that direct line. How does what I’m doing right now in the laboratory have an opportunity to impact a life, and I got hooked, and I never looked back,” she said.
Knudsen’s experience as an oncology researcher at large health care systems, and seeing many mergers taking place around her, led to the realization that it might help to know more about the business of health care. She chose to pursue an MBA. “I’m not sure I’ll forget the look on my husband when I came home one day and said, ‘I’m going to get my MBA’,” Knudsen recalled. “That was probably one of the more unexpected decisions.”
