Dr. Karen Marie Engberg
Santa Barbara, CA. Dr. Karen Engberg – our incredible mom, loving nana, and a great friend to so many over the course of her 72 years under the sun met peace on September 24, 2024. Leaving behind a legacy of wit and wisdom, Karen will forever be remembered for her intellect, her passion for her children and family, and an unwavering commitment to women’s reproductive health. She touched the lives of many through her work as a parent, medical professional and humanitarian.
Born in Chicago to Catherine and Ed Engberg, Karen spent her childhood and early adolescence in Brooklyn, New York, the second oldest of four children. The family moved to Santa Barbara in 1968, and Karen attended Santa Barbara High School, before going back east to Boston University, where she majored in American history and journalism. She earned her medical degree from The George Washington University and launched a career in primary care medicine. She met her husband, Dr. Doug Jackson, while she was a medical school student working one summer at what was then Goleta Valley Community Hospital, where he was an ER doctor. She proposed to him at the rose garden with the Santa Barbara Mission looking on, and the pair shared a wonderful 43-year marriage.
Karen and Doug welcomed their first of four children in 1982, and Karen threw herself into motherhood, while continuing to practice medicine locally. Karen’s featured weekly column “Family Matters” ran in the Santa Barbara News-Press for seven years, chronicling the highs and lows of raising four children while building a career in Santa Barbara in the 1990s. She served on the board of trustees of Montessori Center School and coached countless AYSO soccer teams, all the while working to advance issues of women’s equality. Her book It’s Not the Glass Ceiling, It’s the Sticky Floor debuted in 1999. Karen worked tirelessly to advance progressive values – after dispatching each of her children off to college, she fought to increase access to affordable healthcare through her work as CEO of Jackson Medical Group and later as board chair of Planned Parenthood of the Central Coast.
Karen was an amazing home chef and a great remodeler of houses. HGTV had nothing on a Karen kitchen. She loved swimming, walking along Shoreline Park, her aqua aerobics group, and her book clubs. She forged amazing friendships through her many interests and pursuits, and she cared deeply about the power of female friendship. Best of all, she loved her family. She wintered on the east coast for her youngest daughter’s collegiate basketball seasons, and she made many trips to Seattle and Princeton to spend time with her children and grandchildren as their own lives took flight. She loved to play board games with her children late into the night, and their dinner-time memories of her are marked by her competitive spirit and her uncontrolled laughter. In recent years, she became known first and foremost as “Nana,” and she relished every moment spent with her five grandchildren.
Karen was defined by her welcoming spirit, compassion, unwavering optimism, and belief that a negative can be turned into a positive. She was fond of the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” and she encouraged her loved ones to make the most of the opportunities they were given and to live their lives to the fullest. She believed that life is both long and short, but that it was certainly not something to be wasted by worrying, or by missing the chance to connect with those dearest to you; that there is never an excuse for feeling bored; and that life, to a great extent, is truly what we choose to make of it. She instilled independence, resilience, tenacity and a sense of passion in those closest to her, something for which we will be forever grateful. She was happiest when surrounded by others, something that left a lasting impact on her family members and their friends. “I will never ever forget her kindness, and how warm and welcoming she was to me,” one of them recently wrote.
Karen lived with glioblastoma for the final three years of her life, and died of the disease surrounded by her family at Cottage Hospital, where earlier in her life she had given birth to each of her four children. In the last several months of her life, knowing that her time was limited, she remarked that despite facing the prospect of dying soon, she “had had a great life and a great family.” She was not bitter and never complained about her illness. Karen is survived by her husband, Doug; her daughters, Vanessa, Madeleine and Francesca; her son, Galen; her stepdaughter, Jenny; her grandchildren, Asher, Ellison, Emmett, Louis, and Kay; her nieces, Anna, Michaela, Eliza, Chelsea, and Juliet; her nephews Dylan, James and Gabe; her sons- and daughters-in-law Edd, Sophie and Erika; her siblings, Tony, Kristin and Elizabeth; and her siblings-in-law, Sallysue, Tim and Bob. We will forever treasure the memories of our time with Karen. She leaves behind a host of friends and colleagues whose lives she touched with her sense of humor, a sharp mind, and unmatched generosity.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made in Karen’s memory to Planned Parenthood of the Central Coast, continuing her lifelong passion for advancing access to women’s reproductive health.