Early Career
Handel was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. After graduating in May 1980 from Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro, Handel attended both Prince George's Community College and The University of Maryland but did not complete any degree. She then went to work for Hallmark Cards. Later, she served as deputy chief of staff to Vice-President Dan Quayle's wife, Marilyn, where she worked to promote breast cancer awareness and research.
Handel worked at several major companies including global eye care company Ciba Vision and international accounting firm KPMG. She served as president and CEO of the Greater Fulton County Chamber of Commerce, where she was directly responsible for working with state, local, national and international organizations to bring job growth to north Fulton County. Handel discovered that the chamber was near fiscal insolvency after an employee was found to have embezzled nearly all of the chamber's funds and successfully managed the once-troubled organization through financial turbulence.
In 2002, Handel was named deputy chief of staff by Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, where she served as a policy advisor and supervised constituent services, the Governor's Mansion, and general administration services.
Read more about this topic: Karen Handel
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)