Karen Impola
Studio One and Classical Music Host
Karen Impola is the host of Iowa Public Radio's The Folk Tree and University Concert. Karen began working at KUNI in 1990. Before that, she hosted Folk and progressive music shows at WXPN in Philadelphia, and was a production assistant at NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.”
Karen spent much of her childhood and adolescence holed up in her room with a record player. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology & Anthropology from Swarthmore College, where she also did her first radio show, at 6:00 a.m. on a ten-watt station, to an audience which numbered in the single digits. In her spare time she chauffeurs teenagers and cans tomatoes.