Karen Estep

Karen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but her parents returned to their native West Virginia when she was eighteen months old, eventually settling in the small town of Clendenin where she grew up. She began acting in junior high school, where she discovered a love for making people laugh through her performance in the junior class play, a comedy. Later in Charleston, West Virginia, Karen performed in various productions with the community theatre group, Kanawha Players. At what was then West Virginia State college (now West Virginia State University) she earned a BA with double majors in Speech and Drama and English, and double minors in French and Psychology; then graduated from West Virginia University with a Master's in Theatre. She returned to her undergraduate school as a Speech and Drama instructor and served as Tech Director for 3 of the 4 main productions each year, designing sets and supervising lighting, sound, costumes and makeup; and was artistic director for the fourth. She also created and directed an improvisation group called Lunchbag Theatre. She moved to Houston in the late 70's, married, and became intrigued by the then-new technology of word processing which morphed into a career in computer training at major Houston health care institutions. She divorced in the mid-eighties, and upon retiring in 2013 returned to her first love, acting, concentrating on film and voice overs.