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As Chief Strategic Officer of Scheck Industries, Karen is focused on strategic growth of the companies and project development opportunities.  In her role as the General Counsel, she advises the Scheck companies and serves as the corporate Secretary to the Boards of all the operating companies. Before joining Scheck Industries in 2013, Karen was the Chair of the Construction Law group Vedder Price, in Chicago, having served as the Firm’s chair of the Litigation practice area, as a long-term member of its Board of Directors and as chair of the Compensation Committee. Her extensive litigation experience includes successfully representing national companies in complex trials and other litigation proceedings before federal and state courts, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and other alternative dispute resolution forums. She is also a member of the AAA Panel of Arbitrators for commercial and construction disputes.

Karen was appointed to the 7th Circuit Civil Pattern Jury Instructions Committee. She is a member of the Leading Lawyers Network Advisory Board and has been selected by her peers as a Leading Lawyer in the areas of construction law and commercial litigation from 2004 to 2014. She was included on the Leading Lawyers Network’s “Top Ten Real Estate-Related Lawyers” list in 2012, the “Top 50 Real Estate-Related Women Lawyers” list from 2009 to 2013 and the “Top 100 Women Business Lawyers” list from 2008 to 2010. She was also featured in the Real Estate, Construction & Environmental Edition of Leading Lawyers Magazine in 2010, as well as the Women’s Edition in 2009.

Karen has been ranked in Chambers USA in the Illinois Construction category and has been recommended in the Legal 500 United States. Additionally, she was featured in the 2009 edition of PLC’s Construction and Projects Handbook as one of the top 10 lawyers in Chicago. She also served on the Village of Riverside Plan Commission for eight years (six as Chair), assisting in the rewrite of the community’s historic, award-winning planning and zoning code.

Karen has taught civil litigation, ethics and intellectual property courses for Roosevelt University’s legal assistants’ programs, as well as persuasive speaking and writing at the University of Illinois. A frequent speaker and writer, she served as a faculty member for the ABA’s 2012 and 2013 Forum on the Construction Industry Trial Academies.