- Date Of Birth: July 20, 1953
- Date Of Death: February 7, 2021
- Spouse: Arnold Glenn (divorced) John Lewis (m. 2001)
- Occupation: American labor leader, president of the Chicago Teachers Union
- City: Chicago
- State: Illinois
Karen Lewis (née Jennings; July 20, 1953 – February 7, 2021) was an American educator and labor leader who served as president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), Chicago’s division of the American Federation of Teachers, from 2010 to 2014. For nearly 20 years before becoming president of the teachers union, she was a high school chemistry teacher.
In 1993, Lewis, who was previously a Lutheran, converted to Judaism. She told the Chicago Jewish News in 2013 that she wore a necklace of the Star of David every day. An opera aficionado, she spoke French, Italian, and Latin, and played flute and piano.
On October 9, 2014, Lewis was hospitalized for a “serious illness”. On October 13, a source confirmed that Lewis had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor. On February 7, 2021, Lewis died at age 67. Following her death, the CTU put out a statement saying “Karen did not just lead our movement. Karen was our movement. She bowed to no one, and gave strength to tens of thousands of Chicago Teachers Union educators who followed her lead, and who live by her principles to this day,” and the union told The New York Times that she “dazzled you with her smile, yet could stare down the most powerful enemies of public education and defend our institution with a force rarely seen in organized labor.” She received tributes from Emanuel, current Mayor Lori Lightfoot and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. – Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.
