Dr. Karen Wolffe

Dr. Karen Wolffe manages a private practice as a career counselor and consultant in Austin, Texas.

Dr. Wolffe worked with the American Foundation for the Blind as Director of Professional Development and CareerConnect from 2000 to 2010. Prior to that, she was a faculty member in the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas (UT) where she also directed the Job Readiness Clinic, an applied learning lab for people with disabilities looking for work and university students studying to become rehabilitation counselors or special education teachers. During her career, Dr. Wolffe also taught correspondence courses for the Hadley School for the Blind related to transition and employment issues and taught a distance education course for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock that focused on job placement for people with visual impairments.

She is the author of Career Counseling for People with Disabilities: A Practical Guide to Finding Employment, co-author of the Transition Tote System, editor of Skills for Success: A Career Education Handbook for Children and Youth with Visual Impairments, and co-editor of Teaching Social Skills to Students with Visual Impairments: From Theory to Practice. She also co-authored Transition Issues for Students with Visual Disabilities and AFB’s “Focused on…Social Skills” series. She has published numerous articles in the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness (JVIB) and other significant journals based on her work with blind and low vision individuals both in rehabilitation and education settings. Her research and writing interests include the importance of career education, social skills development, transition issues, employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and literacy in the workplace.

Dr. Wolffe received a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina, a M.Ed. in Special Education with an emphasis on students with multiple disabilities from the University of Texas, and a Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Counseling from the University of Texas, Austin, TX.

Karen’s Advice on Career Education