Karen Boykin-Towns is Pfizer’s Chief Diversity Officer. Her charge is to ensure rapid and measurable progress in making diversity and inclusion a genuine competitive advantage for Pfizer, the world leader among research-based pharmaceutical companies.

She comes to this position with her own diverse experiences in business and government. After joining Pfizer in 1996 as a Senior Legislative Analyst in Government Relations, she progressed through positions of increasing responsibility within Pfizer’s Worldwide Public Affairs and Policy Division. Just prior to becoming Chief Diversity Officer, she led Pfizer’s highly successful government relations and public affairs activities in New York, New Jersey and Delaware. This region, covering more than 29 million people and including the nation’s largest city, encompasses a number of Pfizer’s largest direct customers and indirect payers of health care services.

She was promoted to Chief Diversity Officer in August, 2008, and was also named to both the Human Resources Leadership Team, and to Pfizer’s Senior Management Team, composed of the company’s top 100 executives.

Before joining Pfizer, she was Deputy Director to the New York State Senate Democratic Leader. In her first job in government, she worked her way up to Chief of Staff for then-Senator David A. Paterson, now Governor of New York.
 
She has an MBA from Bernard Baruch College and a BA from the College of Mount Saint Vincent.
 
Always active in her community, she currently serves as a member of the National Board of Directors for the NAACP and is President of the NAACP’s Brooklyn Branch. She was an At-Large Delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention and helped write the Democratic Party Platform for the 2000 National Convention.  In 1999, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appointed her to New York City’s Charter Revision Commission.
 
Among her recent honors are the 2007 New York State Women of Excellence Award; the 2007 National Action Network Keepers of the Dream Award for Community Service; and the 2006 YMCA Harlem Branch Black Achievers in Industry Award.
 
She is married to New York States Assemblyman Darryl C. Towns (D-Brooklyn). They live in Brooklyn with their two daughters, Jasmine and Trinity.