Cover Photography by Kira Derryberry
Karen Moore
April – May 2025 Cover Woman
Written By: Shannon C. Smith
The first time Karen Moore traveled outside the United States alone, she was 17 years old. It was the summer of 1975, and she was living in Istanbul, Turkey with a conservative Turkish family as part of a study abroad program.
The father of the family had one rule for Karen and his own daughter: Do not leave the house alone.
But young Karen Moore already had the independent and adventurous spirit that would later fuel her entrepreneurial success and international travels – so she went out alone anyway.
”I was a young blonde in this very conservative Muslim country, and looking back, I was so naïve,” she says. “So I decided to walk around the block by myself to buy chewing gum.”
As Karen turned the corner of the apartment complex to walk to the market nearby, she heard banging and shouting from a large group of Turkish residents leading an anti-American protest.
“And here I am 17 and blonde and looking very American. So I backed myself up to the wall of the building, and now they’re passing by. And I just start saying words with a German accent. Mind you, I know zero German. But I just waved at them and smiled and spoke like I was German. They passed right by and it was fine. And I got my chewing gum and went home!”
Karen never went out alone again in Istanbul, and she laughs at the memory today. But the experience on that hot summer day sparked in her a deep hunger to educate herself further by seeing the world and meeting its people, filling her passports over the years with the stamps of more than 100 countries.
The encounter in Istanbul also offered a glimpse of the attributes that would carry her far professionally. In that moment, her back against the wall, the young Karen Moore exhibited a healthy dose of fearlessness mixed with quick thinking and strategic communication — delivered with a respectful empathy that endeared her to strangers from very different backgrounds.
Years later, she would leave a safe job in academia to open her own public relations firm — even though she had zero clients, a 4-month-old son and a husband also stepping away from his safe law firm job. And she would use a similar dose of fearlessness mixed with strategy and empathy to build an internationally recognized communications firm based in Tallahassee.
To learn more about the Cover Woman and her inspiring journey, you can access the full article by clicking on the magazine above.
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