The Dynamic Days of an Academic Grant Writer

After college, Karen Kemirembe (Uganda, UWC of the Atlantic, Wellesley ’12) earned a master’s and a Ph.D. in entomology from Penn State, graduating with her doctorate in summer 2020 soon after she and her husband, Troy Carl, had their first daughter. At that point, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, “I found an online job doing impactful remote work,” she writes — and that led to a new job, writing grants for nonprofits.

“I could write grants from anywhere, and if the projects were funded, the nonprofit recipients benefited greatly,” Karen says. Now the parent of two girls, Alina and Inkeri Carl, she is the assistant director in Penn State’s Office of Foundation Relations, where she continues to focus on grant writing.

“Because she serves all of Penn State, no day is the same,” the university reports. “She works on proposals spanning nursing school scholarships, cancer diagnostics, and maintaining space telescopes,” collaborating with faculty members as they seek funding from beyond the customary government sources.

“I like the work I am doing because it is dynamic,” Karen writes. “It involves helping stakeholders to meet their funding needs for different projects, understanding and keeping track of different funding priorities of grantmaking organizations, and helping to tailor future grant applications towards meeting both the organizations’ and communities’ needs while taking emerging global trends into consideration.”

In autumn 2022, Karen and her family hosted a Ukrainian family through the U.S. Uniting for Ukraine Program, helping the family to become financially independent and establish their own home within three months.

This profile is part of the “Graduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.