Karen Gaffney is the President of the Karen Gaffney Foundation. Her non-profit, funded entirely by her speaking engagements, workshops, and donations, is dedicated to championing the journey to full inclusion in families, schools, the workplace, and the community for people with intellectual disabilities. In addition to her work at her non profit, Karen is a full time employee in a law firm, working 32 hours a week.
She is an outspoken advocate for inclusion in the regular classroom for students of all abilities and she shares her experiences, tools and strategies that helped her succeed in her Parish classroom and in an all girl Catholic High School.
Karen is also a role model for physical fitness, and she builds regular exercise into every aspect of her day. She usually starts the day with a two mile swim before she heads off to work! She has a lengthy swim resume to keep up! She successfully swam a relay across the English Channel, a 9 mile nonstop solo swim straight across the width of Lake Tahoe in 59-degree water and became the subject of the documentary: Crossing Tahoe: A Swimmer’s Dream. She has done many other open water swims on the Columbia River, across Lake Champlain, the Boston Harbor, and the San Francisco Bay just to name a few. All of her swims are fundraising swims, and swims to raise awareness about what people with Down syndrome CAN do!
Karen’s work with advocacy and public speaking has taken her to audiences all over the world where she tries to show that Down syndrome is a life meant to be lived! And she succeeds!