KEYNOTE SPEECH, "SAFE TONIGHT, HOME TOMORROW" FUNDRAISING GALA. PONTIAC, MI. OCTOBER 2026.
SPEAKING
speaking engagements
Through photographs and firsthand stories from Extended Stay, Karen invites audiences into a world many have driven past but few have entered: America's hidden housing market. Her ongoing project explores housing insecurity, belonging, and what it means to witness another person’s life.
With warmth, dark humor, and more than twenty years of professional photography experience, Karen offers illustrated talks for non-profits, universities, museums, libraries, conferences, and corporations, nonprofits, and community organizations.
Engagements can include fundraising events, audience discussions, classroom visits, exhibition conversations, book signings, podcast interviews, and social media appearances, with each program tailored to your audience or platform.
Programs are available in person or virtually. A typical engagement includes a 35-minute illustrated presentation followed by 25 minutes of questions and open discussion. Shorter conference talks, classroom visits, workshops, exhibition conversations, and book signings can be arranged.
Bulk book orders are available for event and educational programming.
SPEAKING
Book clubs, literary events, photography groups, arts communities, general audiences.
PERFECT FOR:
“I began with a simple idea: photograph people in rooms.”
Follow the unexpected encounters, wrong turns, dark humor, and personal reckonings behind Extended Stay. Explore how a documentary project takes shape through instinct, uncertainty, and the negotiation between what is imagined and is found.
Crafting a Documentary: Rooms, Roads & Revelations
Photography and journalism programs, arts organizations, students, working photographers.
PERFECT FOR:
A camera can open a conversation. It can also change its course.
For journalists, this discussion examines access, informed consent, trust, and how editorial and visual choices shape public understanding—including the ethical responsibility to recognize when a story should remain untold.
Behind the Lens: The Photographer in the Room
Housing organizations, social work / public policy programs, libraries, museums, community forums.
PERFECT FOR:
What happens when a place intended for a night becomes a place to live?
People experiencing housing insecurity raise broader questions about how American social policy defines housing need, distributes resources, and addresses the widening gap between survival and stability in today's housing market and wider changing economy.
Journey Into America's Hidden Housing Market
presentations include:
karen@karenlippowiths.com
248 320 1943
Contact Karen with scope of project or event, dates or time frame, and budget range for a customized quote.
to inquire:
