Karen Kendrick-Hands
Outreach and Engagement Workshop
Co-founder and Director of Projects of the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG), Karen Kendrick-Hands will participate in the Outreach and Engagement Workshop of Summit Session 4 on November 6, at 10:45am central time.
Karen Kendrick-Hands’ Biography
Karen Kendrick-Hands, a member of the Rotary Club of Madison, WI, USA, D6250 since 2012, helped to form the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG), to synergize her passions for Rotary Service and mitigating climate change and providing a way for like-minded Rotarians to collaborate. She has served as ESRAG’s Chair, Director of Communications, and is currently the Director of Projects. She was the first ever Observer Delegate sent by Rotary International to the UNFCCC climate talks, attending COP24 in Katowice, Poland, December 2018. In February 2020, Karen presented to the Rotary Foundation’s Environmental Issues Task Force, on behalf of ESRAG. Rotary International’s Directors and the Trustees of the Rotary Foundation accepted the Taskforce report unanimously and have created a seventh Area of Focus: Supporting the Environment.
Karen is active with the Wisconsin Chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and is the Co-leader of its Rotary Action Team. When active as an attorney, Karen worked as a volunteer public interest advocate for cleaner air and mobility and transportation choices, including serving on various local, state and regional advisory bodies, for over 30 years.
Karen is blessed to have been a Rotary Youth Exchange student in 1967-68 to Australia. Karen and her husband Larry Hands, also a Rotarian and ESRAG Board member, have been married for 46 years, and have two married sons and three grandchildren. Together they are building a carbon-neutral home and working to restore prairie and savanna habitat on 80 acres in southwest Wisconsin, USA.