Karen K. Gutierrez

Karen K. Gutierrez worked in Marketing at Procter & Gamble for 14 years, including Brand Management assignments on Luvs diapers, Puffs facial tissues, Always feminine hygiene, and on brand groups dedicated to Hispanic marketing and diaper environmental issues. She also worked as an internal consultant to brand groups across Procter & Gamble on direct marketing, entry point marketing (including youth/teen marketing), and ethnic marketing. Finally, she trained Marketing staff on topics such as strategic thinking, creativity, advertising assessment and development, etc., and worked on organization change efforts for the Marketing and Market Research organizations.

Since 1998, Karen has worked as a CDC Fellow in the Health Communications Branch of the Centers for Disease Control's Office on Smoking and Health, serving as a consultant and trainer to states and other organizations regarding effective planning, implementation and evaluation of tobacco counter-marketing campaigns. She is also a member of the Columbia Marketing Panel, made up of youth marketers who regularly advise the CDC and others on how to effectively communicate tobacco counter-marketing messages to kids and teens.

Karen has also lent her marketing and strategic planning expertise to other social causes, including mentoring, education reform, domestic violence, and teen pregnancy prevention. In 1993, she was chosen as a W.K. Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellow and spent three years investigating youth sexual decision-making in 20 U.S. cities and 12 other countries, to determine how to better communicate with youth on this issue.