about karen
Karen Arrington is the founder of The Miss Black USA Pageant and the best-selling, award-winning author of Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, and Opportunity for Black Women in America.
The Miss Black USA Pageant broadcasts live to millions of viewers on Fox, and is America’s first pageant celebrating the brilliance, beauty, and achievements of young women of color.
For more than 37 years, Karen has mentored teens, college students, and young professional women, helping them to achieve greater success, wealth, and impact. Karen’s mentees step into high-powered careers in entertainment, media, medicine, education, civic activism, and beyond.
Karen has received leadership and empowerment awards from The Lifetime Network and Jones New York, and was named a Goodwill Ambassador to the Gambia and the Republic of Sierra Leone by the last living relative of Kunta Kinte.
A philanthropist and humanitarian, she is the co-founder of Diabetes Awareness Day in West Africa and has raised more than $2,000,000 in funding for heart disease research.
When she’s not traveling across the world to lead a luxurious Next Level Life retreat in Dubai or Ghana, you can find Karen at her home near Washington DC.
A Note from Karen
This is 2023. For the first time in history, we’ve got a woman of color Vice President, a black woman on the top of FORBES Richest Women in Entertainment list, and sisters in positions of prestige & power at organizations like XEROX, Care USA, Microsoft, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The World Bank.
With more media attention & opportunity than ever before, it’s time to redefine what it means to be a courageous, compassionate & CONFIDENT black woman, today.
We’ve got obstacles to overcome, stereotypes to smash, and trauma to release – no question about it.
It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.
So my question for YOU is: How big do you want to live?
-Karen
