Inspirational Women
Karen Haze By Judith A. Habert Photos courtesy of Karen Haze
“It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.” — Ella Fitzgerald
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O ONE SYMBOLIZES this belief better than Karen Haze. Born in Manchester, England, to a young mom who had her first child, a son, at the age of 17. "My mother was a baby herself when she had her first baby, my brother, who’s father was not in the picture. After becoming pregnant at 16 and running away from home, a man twice her age, and the Manager of a wrestling ring in a circus, took her in and asked her to marry him. Mom was thrilled to be provided with a home for her baby, albeit government subsidized housing. My mom was briefly ‘encouraged’ to be a wrestler also! I came along four years
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later, the product of a brief affair outside of my mother’s marriage. I was 16 before I found out that the father I lived with my entire life wasn't actually my dad. He had been abusive to my Mom, and we didn’t get along at all, so I actually received this information rather well.” Growing up on a Manchester Council Estate was tough; when money for their home’s electric meter ran out, they had no lights, nor heat. Groceries often ran out before there was money for the next weekly shop. Karen and her brother thought their life was “normal,” as that’s how many of their neighbors lived too. In elementary school, it was noted that both Karen and her brother were extremely intelligent, they were tested, and they both earned places at separate, prestigious Grammar schools. At the allgirls Grammar School, while making friends and having sleepovers, Karen realized her home life wasn't the same as the rest of her friends. This new school had students who came from a much higher economic stratum then she did. This did not deter Karen academically nor socially, “Seeing how my friends lived made me hopeful. Their parents were affectionate and loving to each other, something I was not used to but liked a lot. Most people who lived on the council estate where I grew up were disparaging of those who were wealthy. I learned that there were no differences
in the people, rich or poor, it was simply that they had been presented with different opportunities, made some good choices, put in hard work and perhaps had a little luck along the way. I wanted to work hard and achieve all I could achieve.” So how did a young woman in Karen’s position end up in the U.S as a Corporate Development Executive for KPBS Public Media? “I did my first study abroad program after graduating from High School, spending the summer in Spain. Towards the end of the summer, I hadn't thought about attending college; I knew there was no money for it. The family I stayed with in Spain was extremely affluent, and although the couple spoke little English, the woman kept pushing for me to leave Spain and attend college back in England. To appease her I told her that, yes, I would go to college and so she bought me a plane ticket that week to return to England, right before classes were to start." In reality, Karen had nowhere to go when she returned home, as her parents had divorced and her mother had left the family home. "I wasn't going to live with my "father," so for a short time; I was homeless. Actually, I was couch surfing at friends' houses, until my brother found a flat for us to rent. I was 18, and he was 22. It was a ramshackle mansion house that was hundreds of years old, it had been converted into
flats, and it had no heat, no shower, no hot water unless you waited for an hour for it to warm up. In the mornings we would have frost on the inside of the windows, but we had a ton of fun in that flat, and I was happy to have a roof over my head. It was so dilapidated that they tore it down soon after we had moved out. In the days after I returned home from Spain, I walked into the admissions office at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was the week before school started and I asked if there was room in any courses for me. The woman I spoke to found a place for me and filled out all the paperwork for grants. I also got a housing allowance for the flat, and I was on my way to getting the college education that I never thought possible." Karen worked at a local shoe store through college, which in England is three years of study. After graduation, she knew she wanted to do more than live in the old, cold apartment and work in a shoe shop full time, there were few opportunities in Manchester at that time, and she had no money to fund travel to find new opportunities. "I found a study abroad program in America. With this program, they would fly you to American and could place you anywhere. They placed me in Washington DC for one year, and oh I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I first landed in New York for orientation. I was mesmerized
