A Massachusetts native, Karl left a position as an environmental policy staff member in the Massachusetts State Senate after an informational interview with former Senate President Kevin Harrington. Mr. Harrington encouraged Karl to "go punch your federal ticket" by working in the nation's capital. He left Boston in January of 1997 and planned to return in a few years.

In Washington, Karl joined the policy staff of Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) and spent the next four years in the House of Representatives covering health policy issues. Karl then moved to the Washington office of the American Heart Association. There he led two coalitions that 1) successfully added preventive cardiovascular screenings to the Medicare program and 2) secured funding for public placement of automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

Karl opened his consulting firm in 2004 and helped establish the Campaign for Public Health, an innovative advocacy-focused nonprofit dedicated to increasing the budget of the CDC. He soon became the full-time Executive Director and managed the fundraising, media relations, staffing, and finances of the organization. His accomplishments at CPH include founding a sister nonprofit (the CPH Foundation), raising over $2 million to drive the organization's educational and lobbying programs, establishing a national award program and annual awards ceremony on Capitol Hill, and conducting hundreds of congressional meetings and policy briefings. The CPH Foundation's tours of the CDC took over a dozen members of Congress, thirty-plus senior business leaders, and one-hundred-plus congressional staff from both the House and Senate on tours of the Atlanta-based agency.

Karl reopened his consulting business in 2014 after the owners of Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC) asked him to serve as an advisor to the STC Board. A year later, this Arizona-based public health software company invited him to join the family-owned company as their first Vice President. At STC, Karl oversaw a revenue budget of $10 million (approximately 70 percent of the company’s income at the time). He also managed and wrote business and technical proposals in response to federal and state RFPs, established the company’s first CRM system to efficiently track and manage the sales pipeline, expanded domestic and international markets, trained and grew his team, regularly visited potential or existing clients in US and Canadian states/provinces, and secured millions in new business.

Under the Walker Court banner, Karl also purchased, renovated, and rented a historic property on Capitol Hill from 2014 through 2019.

Karl signed a negotiated contract with the ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine early in 2019. Read about his ongoing work with the ACMG Foundation on the "Clients" page of this site.

Karl is the proud father of three who spends his free time in the garden, renovating his historic home, or doing things outdoors. He is increasingly concerned about the environment and the impact climate change is having on the health and well-being of future generations.