Karen Sender is the Information Architect for NOAA Fisheries and leads the Fisheries Enterprise Data Management Program which is currently focused on data governance and information management modernization. Karen is the Fisheries representative to the NOAA Data Governance Committee and participates on many NOAA, Commerce, and Federal information management work groups. Previous to her current position, Karen worked at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, working as a database architect and systems analyst in the International Fisheries Program. She is a leader and team member at both regional and national levels in efforts to improve the management of Fisheries data and in leading strategic planning and quality management workshops for information management groups. Karen is a member of the NOAA Fisheries National Fishery Information System (FIS) Program Management Team (PMT) and is a member of the FIS Quality Management and Continuous Improvement professional specialty group.  Karen is one of the designers of the national NMFS Metadata Catalog system, InPort, and continues to support NMFS efforts to inventory and document Fisheries data assets.

Prior to working at NOAA Fisheries, Karen worked for over twenty years at the University of Hawaii in Marine Geology and Geophysics with a considerable amount of that time spent at sea on research vessels. She was involved in all aspects of acquisition, processing, integration, analysis, visualization, interpretation, archiving, and documentation of complex data sets, especially side-scan sonar, bathymetry, and navigation, using a variety of state-of-the-art image processing and GIS packages. She was a principal in the development of the SeaMarc II seafloor mapping project, serving as data manager, systems developer, and liaison between scientists and technical groups in data acquisition, processing, and image production of seafloor maps. In 1998, Karen assisted Dr. Robert Ballard in locating the WWII aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, which sank in the Battle of Midway, using side-scan sonar and bathymetric data analysis.