Biography

Ruth Karen was born in Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1940. She was a graduate of the London School of Economics and the New School of Social Research, where she received a master's degree in 1944. She began her career as a foreign and war correspondent and worked as a United Nations correspondent for The Toronto Star and The Reporter magazine. She became a senior vice president of the Business International Corporation, a publishing, research and consulting concern serving multinational corporations. In 1985 she began her own consulting business, Hagai Associates. She wrote ten books, chiefly about the people, culture, and politics of Central America.