Karen Clopton is the chief operating officer and corporate counsel of the San Francisco State University Foundation Inc., which provides the school with administrative services for projects and research. She was the Port of San Francisco's chief of operations from 1999 to 2002. She was responsible for directing the day-to-day business operations of one of America's most diverse ports with commercial, maritime, and recreational activities that take place on 1,000 acres and 7 1/2 miles of waterfront. There are approximately 250 Port employees and a $45 million operating budget.

Clopton joined the Junior Statesmen Foundation board of trustees in 1991. She was active in her Junior State Chapter at Locke High School in Los Angeles, attended the Junior State's Summer School at U.C. Davis and served as Lt. Governor of the California Junior State in 1975-1976.

Clopton was appointed by Mayor Jordan to the San Francisco Civil Service Commission in 1993 and was re-appointed by Mayor Brown to another six-year term. Clopton also served on the San Francisco mayor's advisory employee relations panel from 1992-94 chaired by former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin. She was awarded the prestigious Individual Award of Achievement for Distinguished Service to the Profession and the Public by the State Bar of California's Young Lawyers Association in 1994, which is awarded to one of the state's 40,000 young lawyers each year. In 1998, the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women honored Clopton with its annual Women Who Make A Difference award for making a positive difference in women's lives in the areas of employment and economic development.

She is a graduate of Vassar College cum laude and Antioch University School of Law and was awarded the highly competitive Maguire Fellowship by Vassar College for post-graduate study in international and comparative labor-management relations in London, England. Clopton majored in political science and hispanic studies at Vassar, studied in Madrid, Spain and speaks Spanish.

She holds a BA in English and an MBA, both from Harvard University. She serves on the boards of Community Gatepath, formerly Poplar ReCare, and Ecology Action, and recently completed terms on the Board of Coyote Point Museum for Environmental Education.