Karen Paup holds a Bachelors degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters in Urban Affairs from the University of Delaware. Karen is Vice Chair of the City of Austin's Community Development Commission.

Working with grassroots, neighborhood corporations, Karen helps residents realize their own visions of how their communities should be developed. She is responsible for interaction with community residents and government officials on design, zoning, contract compliance, financing, and construction. Her work has resulted in neighborhood-controlled organizations building the first new houses in their areas in five decades, increasing the housing stock in their neighborhoods by 20%, Austin's only neighborhood-operated housing for the homeless, home-ownership for low-wage jobholders, and nationally acclaimed, community-based housing for the elderly.

Her work with community-controlled housing development includes efforts to help colonia residents in South Texas create community development corporations such as the La Gloria Community Development Corporation. Karen also assists in staffing the Texas Residents Network, which works in public and other subsidized housing. Being bi-lingual, Karen provides board training and technical support to colonia community development corporations, located along Texas' Border with Mexico, and to subsidized housing residents’ councils. At the same time Karen is a key strategist in the establishment of the Austin Housing Trust Fund, Austin’s first local funding source to increase the supply of housing for Austin’s lowest income residents.

In 1997, Karen’s work was recognized by the Center for Community Change through their Leonard Lesser Award for outstanding work with impoverished communities.